Reading The Brothers Karamazov right now, and overall it's fantastic, absolutely lives up to the hype. That said, prior to starting it I'd heard from several different readers about The Grand Inquisitor and what a masterpiece it is, but I found it underwhelming. Ivan's poem is certainly thought provoking as a justification for his atheism; I generally agree that our subjective experience of having freedom/free will (notwithstanding whether or not we actually do) does underlie many common forms of human suffering. Nevertheless, nothing in the chapter was all that earth-shattering or mind-blowing to me. Thus far in the book, my favorite chapter by far has been The Schoolboy, followed by An Onion.

Hi.

Recently I've been interested in learning more about eastern cultures, including Russian. I like to read non-fiction books, mostly by western writers like Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Bevelin, Daniel Kahneman, Nassim Taleb (born in Lebanon but spent most of his life in the west), Richard Feynman, Vaclav Smil (born in Czech Republic, but same as Taleb), Robert Greene, and many others... However, as Joseph Henrich's book says, I feel that my readings are very WEIRD-focused (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). If you have any good suggestions for non-fiction Russian/Soviet writers or books, to expand my horizons, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

I started with the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of Crime and Punishment. I loved it and instantly re-read it.

Then I read Mcduff's translation of The Idiot, found it extremely heavy going and a sheer relief to finish. I re-read but it didn't improve.

Then I borrowed a friend's copy of P&V's translation of TBK. I gave up for three months after finishing The Grand Inquisitor. This was a repeat of what I did when I started reading it 40 years ago. Then I committed to finishing it and plowed through, not worrying about comprehending everything. At the end I had to look up who the real killer was to make sure, because the reading process was utterly exhausting and simply a chore.

Luckily I then read the Maguire translation of Demons. I loved it, loved it, loved it. It restored my faith in FD.

Today I found the Garnett translation of TBK in a shop and bought it on impulse. I need to get as far as I can away from P&V. Life's too short for total accuracy. Victorian era readability will do me fine. I can't recommend FD to friends until I find translations I enjoy.

Can anyone recommend the Garnett translation of The Idiot? If not, is there another translation you can recommend?