New Oblomov translation, additional information

[Paul Williams]

Russian Literature					Bunim & Bannigan
	
			
". . . [Goncharov] is ten heads above me in talent." —Anton Chekov

"Oblomov is a truly great work, the likes of which one has not seen for a 
long, long time. ... I am in rapture over Oblomov and keep rereading 
it."  —Leo Tolstoy			

OBLOMOV
Ivan Goncharov
Translated from the Russian by Stephen Pearl
Introduction by Galya Diment
Foreword by Tatyana Tolstaya

Even though Ivan Goncharov wrote several books that were widely read and 
discussed during his lifetime, today he is remembered for one novel, 
Oblomov, published in 1859, an indisputable classic of Russian literature, 
the artistic stature and cultural significance of which may be compared 
only to other such masterpieces as Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, Leo 
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. 

Stephen Pearl’s new translation, the first major English-language 
publication of Oblomov in more than fifty years, succeeds exquisitely to 
introduce this astonishing and endearing novel to a new generation of 
readers.  Rich in situational comedy, psychological complexity, social 
satire, and incisive depictions of class, ethnicity, and sexuality, 
Oblomov is clearly a novel that was written for all time.

Set in St. Petersburg, Russia, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, an amiable, middle-
aged man lives in an apartment with his life-long servant, Zakhar. Oblomov 
sleeps much of the day, dreaming of his idyllic childhood on his ancestral 
estate, Oblomovka.  His boyhood companion, Stoltz, now an energetic and 
successful businessman, visits his beloved friend Oblomov whenever he is 
nearby, and Oblomov's life changes when Stoltz introduces him to Olga, 
with whom Oblomov falls in love.  

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was born in 1812 in Simbirsk, Russia the son 
of a wealthy grain merchant. Goncharov’s first novel, A Common Story, 
explored the conflicts in Russian society between the landed gentry and 
the rising middle class.  Oblomov, his best-known work, published in 1859, 
brought him wide acclaim.   

Stephen Pearl (translator) was a simultaneous interpreter at the United 
Nations for more than thirty years and was Chief of English Interpretation 
there for fifteen years.  He is a graduate of St. John’s College, Oxford 
University with an M.A. in Classics. 

Galya Diment (Introduction) is Professor and Chair of the Slavic Languages 
and Literatures department at the University of Washington, Seattle. She 
is the author of Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel (University of 
Washington Press) and The Autobiographical Novel of Co-Consciousness: 
Goncharov, Woolf, and Joyce (University Press of Florida).  She edited 
Goncharov's Oblomov: A Critical Companion (Northwestern University Press).

Tatyana Tolstaya (Foreword) is a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and 
essayist and great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy.  Her translated collections 
include On the Golden Porch (1990) and Sleepwalker in a Fog (1992), 
stories, and Pushkin's Children: Writings on Russia and Russians (2003), 
essays. Her satirical novel, The Slynx (2003), is an historical allegory 
set in a dystopian, mutant-inhabited post-nuclear-holocaust Russia.

Russian Literature

Available July 2006
6 x 9, 464 pages
$45 Trade Hardcover: ISBN 1-933480-08-4
$20 Trade Paperback: ISBN 1-933480-09-2       

World Rights: Bunim & Bannigan Ltd

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------