Product Description

Nineteen-year-old Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of a landowner, has difficulty establishing his personal identity amid the political and social upheavals of nineteenth-century Russia.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1751546 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

From the Back Cover
“The Adolescent is the most captivating of Dostoevsky’s novels.” —Konstantin Mochulsky, author of Dostoevsky: His Life and Work

Praise for previous Dostoevsky translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
The Brothers Karamazov:
“One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoeveky’s original.” —The New York Times Book Review
Crime and Punishment:
"The best [translation] currently available . . . an especially faithful recreation . . . with a coiled-spring kinetic energy. . . . Don't miss it." —The Washington Post Book World
Demons:
“A capital job of restoration." --Los Angeles Times

About the Author
About the Translators:

Richard Pevear has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Savinio, Pavel Florensky, and Henri Volohonsky, as well as two books of poetry. He has received fellowships or grants for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the French Ministry of Culture.

Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad. She has translated works by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff into Russian. Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have translated Dead Souls and The Collected Tales by Nikolai Gogol, The Complete Short Novels of Anton Chekhov, and The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons, The Idiot, and The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

They were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of The Brothers Karamazov, and more recently Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France.

Customer Reviews

Great oft passed over Novel
This was Dostoevsky's second last novel, written between the better know Demons (or Devils as it is sometimes translated) and the legendary masterpiece Brothers Karamazov.

This novel has none of the grand scale of BK, nor the masterful dark humour and philosophical depth. Nor does it have the prophetic satirical portrayl of politics that the Demons captures. Yet, it is enchanting in its own quiet way, and its gets inside your head like any great Dostoevsky novel will causing you to experience the mental states of the main character.

Strange, simple and hypnotic; this work is not a masterpiece, it is not a must read, and it does require quite a sizable page/time investment before it becomes truly enjoyable, but after the initial effort, the experience of reading the last half of the book is one not to be missed.

a neglected gem
Without doubt one of his great novels. It is the second time i've read it in quiet awhile and am struck by how modern it really is. The narrative structure of using Arkady as the story teller helps explain the rushed, uneven and feverish pace at with the book unfolds: but it is an example of the blending of form and content. All Dostoevsky's great themes are here but on a smaller scale. The novel is a clear example of a great writer warming up to the themes and ideas that he was to explore fully in his next work and masterpiece, 'The Bros K.' 'The Adolescent' is an excellent introduction to the thematics and style of the world's greatest novelist

The Most Modern Novel I've Read in a Year
If you judge this book on plot and style - you would probably be inclined to toss it after the first hundred pages. However, plot and style are not parts of what modern art is all about. Every reader is, essentially, a passive consumer, sometimes endowed with a degree of healthy curiosity. And every writer's goal today, in my opinion, is to penetrate deeply into the heart and mind of such a consumer, shake him up, wake him up from his slumber, and, if possible inspire him to "create". Not to the extent of turning him into a writer, but at least into a "co-creator", raise a storm in the reader's soul, so that both the writer and the reader now participate in building this amazing world that only a human mind can build.

Dostoyevsky achieves this par excellence. The long and tedious phrases, the weird characters, their strange, bizarre actions, their mood swings from one extreme to the next within a sentence, and, above all, the grotesque that this novel is saturated with to such an extent, I am almost tempted to call it a farce.

Above all, if one were to think about it in context of modern Russia, one would be shocked at how nothing has changed in more than a century.

If, when you pick up a book, you seek entertainment - don't pick up this book. If, however, you like to embark on self-exploration rollercoaster rides, then, by all means, buckle up!