The Adolescent (Everyman's Library) - Hardcover

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140004118X ISBN 13: 9781400041183

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 2003

Synopsis

The illegitimate son of a landowner, Arkady Dolgoruky was raised by foster parents and tutors, and has scarcely ever seen his father, Versilov, and his mother, Versilov’s peasant common-law wife. Arkady goes to Petersburg to meet this “accidental family” and to confront the father who dominates his imagination and whom he both disdains and longs to impress. Having sewn into his coat a document that he believes gives him power over others, Arkady proceeds with an irrepressible youthful volatility that withstands blunders and humiliations at every turn. 

Dostoevsky masterfully depicts adolescence as a state of uncertainty, ignorance, and incompleteness, but also of richness and exuberance, in which everything is still possible. His tale of a youth finding his way in the disorder of Russian society in the 1870s is a high and serious comedy that borders on both farce and tragedy.

The Adolescent (originally published in English as A Raw Youth) is markedly different in tone from Dostoevsky’s other masterpieces. It is told from the point of view of the nineteen-year-old narrator, whose immaturity, freshness, and naïveté are unforgettably reflected in his narrative voice.

This superb new translation—never before published—of one of Dostoevsky’s major novels comes from the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“In the variety of its happenings, the assortment of its characters, the intensity of its passions, and the effect of its conflicts, The Adolescent is the most captivating of all Dostoevsky’s novels.”
—Konstantin Mochulsky, author of Dostoevsky: His Life and Work
Praise for Previous Translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Winners of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
“One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevsky’s original.”
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“It may well be that Dostoevsky’s [world], with all its resourceful energies of life and language, is only now—and through the medium of [this] new translation—beginning to come home to the English-speaking reader.”
—NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

“The best [translation] currently available . . . An especially faithful re-creation . . . with a coiled-spring kinetic energy . . . Don’t miss it.”
—WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

“Reaches as close to Dostoevsky’s Russian as is possible in English . . . the original’s force and frightening immediacy is captured . . . The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation will become the standard version.”
—CHICAGO TRIBUNE

DEMONS

“The merit in this edition of Demons resides in the technical virtuosity of the translators . . . They capture the feverishly intense, personal explosions of activity and emotion that manifest themselves in Russian life.”
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“[Pevear and Volokhonsky] come into their own when faced with Dostoevsky’s wonderfully quirky use of varied speech patterns . . . A capital job of restoration.”
—LOS ANGELES TIMES

From the Inside Flap:

This superb new translation--never before published--of one of Dostoevsky's major novels comes from the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. "The Adolescent (originally published in English as "A Raw Youth) is markedly different in tone from Dostoevsky's other masterpieces. It is told from the point of view of the nineteen-year-old narrator, whose immaturity, freshness, and naivete are unforgettably reflected in his narrative voice.
The illegitimate son of a landowner, Arkady Dolgoruky was raised by foster parents and tutors, and has scarcely ever seen his father, Versilov, and his mother, Versilov's peasant common-law wife. Arkady goes to Petersburg to meet this "accidental family" and to confront the father who dominates his imagination and whom he both disdains and longs to impress. Having sewn into his coat a document that he believes gives him power over others, Arkady proceeds with an irrepressible youthful volatility that withstands blunders and humiliations at every turn. Dostoevsky masterfully depicts adolescence as a state of uncertainty, ignorance, and incompleteness, but also of richness and exuberance, in which everything is still possible. His tale of a youth finding his way in the disorder of Russian society in the 1870s is a high and serious comedy that borders on both farce and tragedy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 140004118X
• ISBN 13: 9781400041183
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 624