War and Peace New Translation/NY Times blog
 

War and Peace is virtual canon, and just as with the Iliad or the Bible, each generation is treated to multiple new interpretations of Tolstoy's masterpiece, originally written in Russian and French. The long awaited translation by the celebrated the husband and wife team Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who have been busily translating all the Russian Classics, was released this month. This has promted an interesting blog (really, a virtual book club) in the NY Times' Books section.

http://readingroom.blogs.nytimes.com/

Is it better than the NRSV?

You can now see examples of my brilliant literary criticism on this blog. (It's the NY Times and they have to approve it before it appears, so it must be brilliant.)

well done.

So are you going to read it? Personally, I like the idea of reading about other people who are reading it, but I could be convinced otherwise.

As I explain in the blog, I'm not convinced this new translation is the one to read if you're going to take the time to read or re-read it. If I re-read the whole thing I might read the Rosemary Edmonds version published by Penguin. It's stood the test of time and the experts are saying good things about it, but same with Ann Dunnigan's which I haver read. But I'm not even sure it matters with modern languages.