The Idiot
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The Idiot
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Narrated by:
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Peter Batchelor
About this listen
Pevear and Volokhonsky may be the premier Russian-to-English translators of the era. (The New Yorker)
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s masterful translation of The Idiot is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.
After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The 26-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and “be among people”. Even before he reaches home, he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement.
In Petersburg, the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this “positively beautiful man” on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.
This audio edition of The Idiot is the only recording of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation of Dostoevsky’s classic work. This audiobook is masterfully narrated by Peter Batchelor. Produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont.
©2001 Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (P)2024 Echo Point Books & Media, LLCWhat listeners say about The Idiot
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Otras
- 04-05-2024
Strange Editing, Pretty Good Performance
The editing sounds a lot like there were frequent double takes which have been spliced together. Often passages abruptly sound like they've come from different reading sessions, where the narrator suddenly has a different tone and tempo. This can have a jarring effect where you're left a bit distracted by the editing.
The narrator himself is pretty good. Generally he does a good job at playing characters of varying age and gender, but he will also sometimes abruptly change his style of voice for a particular character to convey a change in emotion, I noticed this with the main character (the Prince) and it left me confused until I realized what was happening. Some of his character voices are admittedly weaker than others. In general though, I certainly got the sense of 19th century Russian socialites from his performance, so definitely a success there.
The translation seems pretty good but this is coming from a perspective of barely any Dostoyevsky/Idiot experience. The one other recent translation I glanced over is different to this one, for example, this one had an English idiom that the one I read didn't, which could perhaps be a sign of creative license on the translators part in an attempt to convey Dostoyevsky's meaning rather than translate literally.
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