"Mesmerizingly good ... the best, truest translation of Dostoevsky's masterpiece into English. It's a magnificent, almost terrifying achievement of translation, one that makes its predecessors, however worthy, seem safe and polite."-STEVE DONAGHUE, Open Letters Monthly

Part of the Norton Library series “As Kate Holland notes in her fine introduction to these new translations, Nikolai Gogol is a hybrid: Ukrainian-Russian, Romantic-Realist, equal parts nightmare and satire. Michael Katz hears this hybrid tension. We sense the terror and fantasy of Ukrainian folklore flooding Petersburg space, revealing a Gogol for our haunted times.� —Caryl Emerson (Princeton University) The Norton Library edition of Selected Tales features a collection of Nikolai Gogol’s most regarded short fiction: “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Auntie,� “Nevsky Prospect,� “Notes of a Madman,� “The Nose,� “The Carriage,� “The Portrait,� and “The Overcoat� newly translated by Michael R. Katz. An introduction by Kate Holland situates the stories in the historical context of imperial St. Petersburg, inviting readers to appreciate Gogol’s incisive social critique and the transformative vision of his writing. The Norton Library is a growing collection of high-quality texts and translations—influential works of literature and philosophy—introduced and edited by leading scholars. Norton Library editions prepare readers for their first encounter with the works that they’ll re-read over a lifetime. Inviting introductions highlight the work’s significance and influence, providing the historical and literary context students need to dive in with confidence. Endnotes and an easy-to-read design deliver an uninterrupted reading experience, encouraging students to read the text first and refer to endnotes for more information as needed. An affordable price (most $10 or less) encourages students to buy the book and to come to class with the assigned edition. About the Authors: Michael R. Katz is C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has published translations of more than fifteen Russian novels, including Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov. Kate Holland is Associate Professor of Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre in the 1870s. She is President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.

About Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground "The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts that hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. . . . Men are at the same time villains and saints; their acts are at once beautiful and despicable. . . . It is all the same to him whether you are noble or simple, a tramp or a great lady. Whoever you are, you are the vessel of this perplexed liquid, this cloudy, yeasty, precious stuff, the soul." -Virginia Woolf

So essential is Crime and Punishment (1866) to global literature and to our understanding of Russia that it was one of the three books Edward Snowden, while confined to the Moscow airport, was given to help him absorb the culture. In a work that best embodies the existential dilemmas of man's will to power, an impoverished student, sees himself as extraordinary and therefore free to commit crimes. English translators have struggled with excessive literalism and no translation is felicitous to the literary nuances of the original prose. Now, Michael Katz addresses these challenges with new insights into the linguistic richness, the subtle tones and the cunning humour in this sparkling rendition of Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece.

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes relevant writings by Dostoevsky, among them "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," the author s account of a formative trip to the West. New to the Second Edition are excerpts from V. F. Odoevksy s "Russian Nights" and I. S. Turgenev s "Hamlet of Shchigrovsk District." In "Responses," Michael Katz links this seminal novel to the theme of the underground man in six famous works, two of them new to the Second Edition: an excerpt from M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin s The Swallows, Woody Allen s Notes from the Overfed, Robert Walser s The Child, an excerpt from Ralph Ellison s The Invisible Man, an excerpt from Yevgeny Zamyatin s We, and an excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre s Erostratus. "Criticism" brings together eleven interpretations by both Russian and Western critics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two of them new to the Second Edition. Included are essays by Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Vasily Rozanov, Lev Shestov, M. M. Bakhtin, Ralph E. Matlaw, Victor Erlich, Robert Louis Jackson, Gary Saul Morson, Richard H. Weisberg, Joseph Frank, and Tzvetan Todorov. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."

S. A. An-sky's novel dramatizes the dilemmas of Jewish young people in late Tsarist Russia as they strive to throw off their traditional religious upbringing to adopt a secular and modern identity. The action unfolds in the town of M. in the Pale of Settlement, where an engaging cast of characters wrestles with cultural and social issues. Their exploits culminate in helping a young Jewish woman evade an arranged marriage and a young Russian woman leave home so she can pursue her studies at a European university. This startling novel reveals the tensions and triumphs of coming of age in a revolutionary time.

S. A. An-sky's novel dramatizes the dilemmas of Jewish young people in late Tsarist Russia as they strive to throw off their traditional religious upbringing to adopt a secular and modern identity. The action unfolds in the town of M. in the Pale of Settlement, where an engaging cast of characters wrestles with cultural and social issues. Their exploits culminate in helping a young Jewish woman evade an arranged marriage and a young Russian woman leave home so she can pursue her studies at a European university. This startling novel reveals the tensions and triumphs of coming of age in a revolutionary time.

Devils, also known in English as The Possessed and The Demons, was first published in 1871-2. The third of Dostoevsky's five major novels, it is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism, depicting the disarray which follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town. Dostoevsky compares infectious radicalism to the devils that drove the Gadarene swine over the precipice in his vision of a society possessed by demonic creatures that produce devastating delusions of rationality. Dostoevsky is at his most imaginatively humorous in Devils: the novel is full of buffoonery and grotesque comedy. The plot is loosely based on the details of a notorious case of political murder, but Dostoevsky weaves suicide, rape, and a multiplicity of scandals into a compelling story of political evil. _ This new translation also includes the chapter `Stavrogin's Confession', which was initially considered to be too shocking to print. In this edition it appears where the author originally intended it. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. _ _

"Herzen's novel played a significant part in the intellectual ferment of the 1840s. It is an important book in social and moral terms, and wonderfully expressive of Herzen's personality." Isaiah BerlinAlexander Herzen was one of the major figures in Russian intellectual life in the nineteenth century. Who Is to Blame? was his first novel. A revealing document and a noteworthy contribution to Russian literature in its own right, it establishes the origins of Herzen's spiritual quest and the outlines of his emerging social and political beliefs, and it foreshadows his mature philosophical views."

"No work in modern literature, with the possible exception of Uncle Tom's Cabin, can compete with What Is to Be Done? in its effect on human lives and its power to make history. For Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution." Joseph Frank, The Southern Review

Almost from the moment of its publication in 1863, Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel, What Is to Be Done?, had a profound impact on the course of Russian literature and politics. The idealized image it offered of dedicated and self-sacrificing intellectuals transforming society by means of scientific knowledge served as a model of inspiration for Russia's revolutionary intelligentsia. On the one hand, the novel's condemnation of moderate reform helped to bring about the irrevocable break between radical intellectuals and liberal reformers; on the other, Chernyshevsky's socialist vision polarized conservatives' opposition to institutional reform. Lenin himself called Chernyshevsky "the greatest and most talented representative of socialism before Marx"; and the controversy surrounding What Is to Be Done? exacerbated the conflicts that eventually led to the Russian Revolution.

Michael R. Katz's readable and compelling translation is now the definitive unabridged English-language version, brilliantly capturing the extraordinary qualities of the original. William G. Wagner has provided full annotations to Chernyshevsky's allusions and references and to the, sources of his ideas, and has appended a critical bibliography. An introduction by Katz and Wagner places the novel in the context of nineteenth-century Russian social, political, and intellectual history and literature, and explores its importance for several generations of Russian radicals."

This memoir by Vladimir Pecherin (or Petcherine) (1807-85) is a story of the life of a rebel against any form of despotism. Shortly after his appointment as Professor of Classics at Moscow University, Pecherin fled from Russia in 1836 to pursue radical politics in Europe. He was the first Russian political emigrant. In 1840, he suddenly and unexpectedly converted to Catholicism and entered the Redemptorist Order as a monk. After 20 years of service as a missionary, he parted ways with the Redemptorists and for the last 23 years of his life served as a chaplain at the Mater Hospital in Dublin. Pecherin wrote the memoir during his time in Dublin.His controversial memoir, poignantly critical of the Russian government and the Catholic Church of his time, was only published for the first time in Russia a hundred years after his death. It contains a vivid account of his adventures in Europe, mainly in Belgium, after leaving Russia, and his struggle against poverty. He was an exceptionally fine writer and talented poet. In this first translation of Pecherin's memoir into English the reader finds an engaging story of the individual who could have been a character in a novel by Dostoevsky, torn from his Russian soil.

"The beginning of this tale of bygone days in Odessa dates to the dawn of the twentieth century. At that time we used to refer to the first years of this period as the 'springtime, ' meaning a social and political awakening. For my generation, these years also coincided with our own personal springtime, in the sense that we were all in our youthful twenties. And both of these springtimes, as well as the image of our carefree Black Sea capital with acacias growing along its steep banks, are interwoven in my memory with the story of one family in which there were five children: Marusya, Marko, Lika, Serezha, and Torik." from The Five

The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siecle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880 1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers. The author deftly paints a picture of Russia's decay and decline a world permeated with sexuality, mystery, and intrigue. Michael R. Katz has crafted the first English-language translation of this important novel, which was written in Russian in 1935 and published a year later in Paris under the title Pyatero.

The book is Jabotinsky's elegaic paean to the Odessa of his youth, a place that no longer exists. It tells the story of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, the Milgroms, at the turn of the century. It follows five siblings as they change, mature, and come to accept their places in a rapidly evolving world. With flashes of humor, Jabotinsky captures the ferment of the time as reflected in political, social, artistic, and spiritual developments. He depicts with nostalgia the excitement of life in old Odessa and comments poignantly on the failure of the dream of Jewish assimilation within the Russian empire."

Recounting the murder of an elderly woman by a student expelled from university, Crime and Punishment is a psychological and political novel that portrays the strains on Russian society in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its protagonist, Raskolnikov, moves in a world of dire poverty, disillusionment, radicalism, and nihilism interwoven with religious faith and utopianism. In Dostoevsky's innovative style, which he called fantastic realism, the narrator frequently reports from within the protagonist's mind. The depiction of the desperate lives of tradespeople, students, alcoholics, prostitutes, and criminals gives readers insight into the urban society of St. Petersburg at the time. The first part of this book offers instructors guidance on Russian editions and English translations, a map of St. Petersburg showing locations mentioned in the novel, a list of characters and an explanation of the Russian naming system, analysis of key scenes, and selected critical works on the novel. In the second part, essays address many of Dostoevsky's themes and consider the role of ethics, gender, money, Orthodox Christianity, and social justice in the narrative. The volume concludes with essays on digital media and film adaptations.

"It evoked almost unprecedented discussions, like those at the time of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Some praised the novel far more than it deserved, others complained bitterly that it was a defamation of youth. I may, however, without exaggeration assert that no one in Russia took the trouble to fathom the ideas of the novel. The eulogies and condemnations are equally one-sided." Thus did Mikhail Artsybashev (1878 1927), whose novels and short stories are suffused with themes of sex, suicide, and murder, describe the reaction to publication in 1907 of Sanin, his second novel. The work provoked heated debates among the Russian reading public, and the journal in which it was published serially was soon closed down by the authorities.

The hero of Artsybashev's novel exhibits a set of new values to be contrasted with the morality of the older Russian intelligentsia. Sanin is an attractive, clever, powerful, life-loving man who is, at the same time, an amoral and carnal animal, bored both by politics and by religion. During the novel he lusts after his own sister, but defends her when she is betrayed by an arrogant officer; he deflowers an innocent-but-willing virgin; and encourages a Jewish friend to end his self-doubts by committing suicide. Sanin's extreme individualism greatly appealed to young people in Russia during the twilight years of the Romanov regime. "Saninism" was marked by sensualism, self-gratification, and self-destruction and gained in credibility in an atmosphere of moral and spiritual despondency.

Artybashev drew upon a wide range of sources for his inspiration Sanin owes debts to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Nietzsche's notion of the "superman," and the work of the individualist anarchist philosopher Johann Kaspar Schmidt. Michael R. Katz's translation of this controversial novel is the first into English in almost seventy years.

"Russian pornography is not plain pornography such as the French and Germans produce, but pornography with ideas." Kornei Chukovsky

"Those who saw in the much discussed novel only suggestive scenes, shocking their morality or titillating their senses, were mistaken; it was, as usual in Russia, a book with a message, and Sanin slept with all his mistresses to prove a thesis rather than to obey a natural urge." Marc Slonim"

A work unprecedented in world literature, this unique volume contains a new translation of Lev Tolstoy’s controversial novella The Kreutzer Sonata, which was initially banned by Russian censors. In addition, available to English readers for the first time is a fascinating and previously neglected constellation of counterstories written by the author’s wife and son in direct response to Tolstoy’s provocative tale, each a passionate attempt to undo the message of the original work. These radically conflicting tales, accompanied by excerpts from family letters, diaries, notes, and memoirs, provide readers with a vivid and highly revealing case study of the powerful disputes concerning sexuality and gender roles that erupted within the cultural context of late-nineteenth-century Russian, as well as European, society.

Vasily Sleptsov was a Russian social activist and writer during the politically charged 1860s, known as the "era of great reforms," and marked by Alexander II's emancipation of the serfs and the relaxation lifting of censorship. Popular in his day, Sleptsov's contemporaries Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov praised his writing:, with Chekhov once remarkeding, "Sleptsov taught me, better than most, to understand the Russian intelligent, and my own self as well." The novella Hard Times is considered Sleptsov's most important work. It focused popular attention on the radical and liberal movements through its fictional setting, where the characters contend with constantly evolving political and social dilemmas. Hard Times was immediately recognized as a vibrant and compelling depiction of prerevolutionary Russian intellectual society, full of lively debates about the possibilities of liberal reform or radical revolution that questioned the viability of a political system facing massive social problems. This is the first English-language version of Hard Times, expertly and fluidly translated by Michael Katz. Highly readable, it provides important historical insights on the political and social climate of a volatile and transformative period in Russia history.

"It evoked almost unprecedented discussions, like those at the time of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Some praised the novel far more than it deserved, others complained bitterly that it was a defamation of youth. I may, however, without exaggeration assert that no one in Russia took the trouble to fathom the ideas of the novel. The eulogies and condemnations are equally one-sided." Thus did Mikhail Artsybashev (1878 1927), whose novels and short stories are suffused with themes of sex, suicide, and murder, describe the reaction to publication in 1907 of Sanin, his second novel. The work provoked heated debates among the Russian reading public, and the journal in which it was published serially was soon closed down by the authorities.

The hero of Artsybashev's novel exhibits a set of new values to be contrasted with the morality of the older Russian intelligentsia. Sanin is an attractive, clever, powerful, life-loving man who is, at the same time, an amoral and carnal animal, bored both by politics and by religion. During the novel he lusts after his own sister, but defends her when she is betrayed by an arrogant officer; he deflowers an innocent-but-willing virgin; and encourages a Jewish friend to end his self-doubts by committing suicide. Sanin's extreme individualism greatly appealed to young people in Russia during the twilight years of the Romanov regime. "Saninism" was marked by sensualism, self-gratification, and self-destruction and gained in credibility in an atmosphere of moral and spiritual despondency.

Artybashev drew upon a wide range of sources for his inspiration Sanin owes debts to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Nietzsche's notion of the "superman," and the work of the individualist anarchist philosopher Johann Kaspar Schmidt. Michael R. Katz's translation of this controversial novel is the first into English in almost seventy years.

"Russian pornography is not plain pornography such as the French and Germans produce, but pornography with ideas." Kornei Chukovsky

"Those who saw in the much discussed novel only suggestive scenes, shocking their morality or titillating their senses, were mistaken; it was, as usual in Russia, a book with a message, and Sanin slept with all his mistresses to prove a thesis rather than to obey a natural urge." Marc Slonim"

Recounting the murder of an elderly woman by a student expelled from university, Crime and Punishment is a psychological and political novel that portrays the strains on Russian society in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its protagonist, Raskolnikov, moves in a world of dire poverty, disillusionment, radicalism, and nihilism interwoven with religious faith and utopianism. In Dostoevsky's innovative style, which he called fantastic realism, the narrator frequently reports from within the protagonist's mind. The depiction of the desperate lives of tradespeople, students, alcoholics, prostitutes, and criminals gives readers insight into the urban society of St. Petersburg at the time. The first part of this book offers instructors guidance on Russian editions and English translations, a map of St. Petersburg showing locations mentioned in the novel, a list of characters and an explanation of the Russian naming system, analysis of key scenes, and selected critical works on the novel. In the second part, essays address many of Dostoevsky's themes and consider the role of ethics, gender, money, Orthodox Christianity, and social justice in the narrative. The volume concludes with essays on digital media and film adaptations.