Count Leo Tolstoy(1828-1910) was born in central Russia. After serving in the Crimean War, he retired to his estate and devoted himself to writing, farming, and raising his large family. His novels and outspoken social polemics brought him world fame.
Richard Pevearhas 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 Volokhonskywas born in Leningrad. She has translated works by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff into Russian.
Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have translatedDead Souls and The Collected Storiesby Nikolai Gogol,The Complete Short Novels of Chekhov, andThe Brothers Karamazov,Crime and Punishment,Notes from Underground,Demons,The Idiot, andThe Adolescentby Fyodor Dostoevsky. They were twice awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for their version of Dostoevsky'sThe Brothers Karamazovand for Tolstoy'sAnna Karenina), and their translation of Dostoevsky's Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
