The Double and The Gambler

Description

IN A NEW TRANSLATION BY RICHARD PEVEAR and LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY Two small masterpieces in one volume. First, The Double, a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare that foreshadows Kafka and Sartre. A minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelganger - a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him with his friends and colleagues. In the dilemma of his increasingly paranoid hero, Dostoevsky makes vividly concrete the inner plurality of consciousness that would become a major theme of his work. Second, The Gambler, a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky - who once gambled away his wife's wedding ring- knew intimately from his own experience. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are known for their highly-acclaimed translations of Dostoevsky (Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment , The Idiot, The Adolescentand Notes from Underground have already been published by Everyman). They have twice been awarded America's PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, for The Brothers Karamazov and for their translation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.