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I have avoided Dostoevsky for some years, despite having had a professor in undergraduate school who said of The Idiot, “I can’t keep away from that book.” At length I decided to take a university level interest course in Dostoevsky so that I was compelled to encounter him. Sidney Monas’s translation from 1968 is indeed still in print and I bought it. Though I much admire Peavear’s Anna, I felt that it and three others, including Ready, were consciously translations, whereas Monas read, in the “test chapter” I used, more smoothly and compellingly. Monas’s use of contemporary contractions, for instance, gives the book an extra energy. Very much recommended.
Hi Graham, thanks for sharing your thoughts! It’s interesting what you say about Pevear, Ready and two others (maybe McDuff and Slater?), that they were “consciously translations”. Perhaps this is a result of the translation being what they call “source-oriented” rather than “target-oriented”… these translators may indeed be trying to represent Russian accurately rather than write appealingly in English.