The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession. Cet article n’est pas disponible.The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession

Mary Beard (from her introduction): "Carson was one of the finest translators there has even been of nineteenth-century Russian Literature. It was an academic background that made him particularly alert to the forms and technicalities of language and expression... that in translating this "late Tolstoy," one should not make the mistake of imposing on it a literary, stylish Rhetoric, as so many translators have done. He wanted the reader in English to be able to see what Tolstoy had been doing in Russian."

AN Wilson: "It was an inspired idea to link the disturbing fiction of Ivan Ilyich and Tolstoy's personal Confession. Peter Carson's translation is perfect. New readers will be drawn by the directness and ruggedness of his prose. Those who think the texts are familiar will read them here as if for the first time."

Donald Rayfield (TLS): "Over the past hundred years we have had numerous versions, from serviceable to excellent of (Tolstoy's) major works. This volume, however, is arguably the best so far, not just because Peter Carson makes no mistakes, but because he has found the perfect balance in English, which tolerates repetition less than Tolstoy did, to provide a text retaining all the hypnotic power of the original."

Jay Parini: This is as good as Tolstoy gets in English. Read these searing works again, with awe."

Peter Carson's translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession, dramatically completed in the very last month of his own life, set a new standard for literary translations of Tolstoy. Realising that the the two works formed an obvious pairing that have rarely been combined, Carson devoted himself to bringing these two late works into the English language. Carson's "stunning, unvarnished translation" (Ann Hulbert, The Atlantic) preserves the deceptive simplicity of Tolstoy. With an introduction by Mary Beard, who calls Carson "one of the finest translators there has ever been of nineteenth-century Russian literature," Carson's translations present Tolstoy to an English audience "in all his rough-and-ready majesty" (Rosamund Bartlett).

PETER CARSON (1938 - 2013) was the editor in chief of Penguin UK and Profile Books and the translator of Fathers and Sons by Turgenev and the plays of Anton Chekhov. He lived in London until his death.