War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of War and Peace
Book Review: Excellent novel, excellent translation, but is there a mistake?
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read WAR & PEACE in Russian and in various translations in English. These translators are excellent and this edition is very solid. However, I should like to point out that I work at a bookstore in Chicago and found a mistake on the FIRST PAGE! DOES ANYONE PROOFREAD!!!??? I mean, come on, it's a mistake on the first page. Where it should read "et" in the first part, it actually reads "and." Ouch...this must be an embarrassment for the publishers or for whomever is to blame for such a blatant error. Of course, we all know that the translators have an excellent command of Russian, English, and French...so let's not be hard on them. But someone is really idiotic for letting this go to the press.Book Review: Excellent translation
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are interested in this story then this is an excellent translation to buy. I have another copy of the book at home and it is from a translation that is about 100 years old. This one does bring forth more clarity of the text and imagery than the older copy. Great story too. Worth the time it took to read it.Book Review: First impressions: Translation good. Footnotes disconcerting
Summary: 4 Stars
These are my first impressions of the translation and the text after having read Pevear's introduction and the first 140 pages.
I am enjoying reading this new translation. The hardback volume appears to be durable and is very readable.
I like the decision to translate Tolstoy's words relatively literally, so that in order to preserve at least some of the "lyrical intensity" of Tolstoy's words, a two-word sentence in the original Russian, for example, becomes "Drops dripped" in English rather than some longer rendition.
On the other hand, I find it extremely annoying that the French text is preserved in the main body of the pages, with the English translations in the footnotes. It is very disconcerting to me, since I can't read French, to have to jump back and forth to and from the footnotes. I would have much preferred to have the English translations of the French in the main body and the original French in the footnotes, even though Tolstoy himself put the French in the main body. He was writing most likely for readers who could read both Russian and French, but this English translation is presumably for those of us who can read neither.
Book Review: For me, a page-turner, a rich experience
Summary: 5 Stars
I am not a connoisseur. I was drawn to this book by excerpts read by the translators on a radio interview. I have compared some passages with three other translations. I like this one because the sentences are unhurried and seem exotic to me, transporting me away from the here and now. What I saw in the other translations lacked this quality.
The first 100 pages or so were slow going while I got familiar with all the characters' names and figured out what was going on. This was well worth the effort. I marked the useful sections that identify characters, summarize chapters, and furnish historical background notes of interest. The further I read, the less I used those sections.
This tale has humor, insight, a lot of irony, pathos, beauty, passion, reflection, likable characters, not-so-likable characters, a lot of real information about the era--everything I could want in a book.
The French language passages, starting at the beginning, are a little laborious to read because of the small-print footnoted translation, but that's not a deal-breaker. On balance, I would rather have it this way so I know when the characters are speaking French.
Book Review: Forget its size and just start reading...
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished reading this amazing (and amazingly long) book and I am left in awe by the presence of such a great writer. This is my first encounter with Tolstoy but it definitely won't be my last. To tell the truth I would never have picked up this book on my own because it has this aura of intimadation about it and its sheer length can be utterly daunting; in fact I almost dropped the class because I was hoping we were going to read Anna Karenina, but that would have been a fatal mistake!
War and Peace is a book unlike any other I've read (and I've read in the hundreds)... it has amazing scope and originality and a psycological precision that truly stupifies. Tolstoy is in absolute control over his prose; at times he teases and misleads the reader (this killed me at first) and at other times he tickled my funny bone just right. He occassionally bends down to catch that humorous side of human nature that can only be seen from a certain angle and I respect him for that; it's not all artists who can manage to do this. I remember I had barely reached the first 100 pages when I began to recognize just what kind of writer I was dealing with and all I could do was submit my will and bow down to this towering giant of world literature...
I will never forget the experience of reading this book. And finishing feels pretty damn good too! Now on with writing my paper on it!!!