I like big books and I cannot lie! Wordsworth Classics presents the Wilbour translation in two volumes, but Signet Classics still sells what may be the thickest mass-market paperback in existence. More pages than their War and Peace!
I read and enjoyed the Maude translation, but most people will have heard of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, as it was chosen for Oprah’s book club in 2004. Supposedly it sounds more like Tolstoy than, say, Garnett…
I thought I wouldn’t like this book. I didn’t like the first part, which described the spread of the plague. But the plague is not actually the point. What matters is how people react to it.
The Plague is popular these days because of the pandemic; that’s a good thing, because it’s an essentially hopeful book.
If you have never read The Tale of Genji, my advice is, DON’T START WITH TYLER. That’s what I did: I started with Tyler. That was a mistake.
Quantitative scales are all very well and good. Except that the numbers mean different things to different people.
Want to know how many pages a novel is? Well, how long is a piece of string? IT DEPENDS!
“The Noli” has been abridged, adapted, bowdlerized, and translated with several different titles, so there’s definitely some potential for confusion.
If you don’t want to read all 120 chapters, there’s a 60-chapter abridgement. And a kids’ version that’s only 64 pages (including the illustrations)!
This is a trickier question than it used to be. But that’s a good thing!
