{"product_id":"peter-the-greats-african-isbn-9781681375991","title":"Peter the Great's African","description":"\u003cb\u003eNewly translated, unfinished works about power, class conflict, and artistic inspiration by Russia's greatest poet.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlexander Pushkin, Russia’s foundational writer, was constantly experimenting with new genres, and this fresh selection ushers readers into his creative laboratory. Politics and history weighed heavily on Pushkin’s imagination, and in “Peter the Great’s African” he depicts the Tsar through the eyes of one of his closest confidantes, Ibrahim, a former slave, modeled on Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather. At once outsider and insider, Ibrahim offers a sympathetic yet questioning view of Peter’s attempt to integrate his vast, archaic empire into Europe. In the witty “History of the Village of Goriukhino” Pushkin employs parody and self-parody to explore problems of writing history, while “Dubrovsky” is both a gripping adventure story and a vivid picture of provincial Russia in the late eighteenth century, with its class conflicts ready to boil over in violence. “The Egyptian Nights,” an effervescent mixture of prose and poetry, reflects on the nature of artistic inspiration and the problem of the poet’s place in a rapidly changing and ever more commercialized society.\"It is not enough to say that Gannibal’s great-grandson became a poet, even a great poet. Pushkin, it is often claimed, invented the Russian literary language itself.\" —Jennifer Wilson, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Notably, all poetic sections appear in rhymed, metrical verse. It is challenging to produce iambic tetrameters in modern English that sound serious, let alone a worthy of Pushkin, yet these translators pull off a miracle, using a delicate combination of full and half-rhymes to prevent the magnificent poem that concludes 'Egyptian Nights' (155-157) from sounding like a children’s song. To translate a work in which the distinction between poetry and prose is central, however, this feat is indeed a necessary miracle.\" —Emily Wang,\u003ci\u003e Slavic and East European Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Pushkin is everywhere.” —Elif Batuman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The challenges of translating Pushkin are well known, and they have seldom met with such sure hands as those of Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler.” —Judges of the MLA Lois Roth Translation Prize on \u003ci\u003eThe Captain’s Daughter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eAs a bonus to this fine translation of ‘Dubrovsky,’ Robert Chandler includes ‘Egyptian Nights,’ Pushkin’s original mix of prose and verse. . . . Chandler shows that he is as gifted at translating verse as he is with prose.” —Donald Rayfield\u003cb\u003eAlexander Pushkin\u003c\/b\u003e (1799–1837) is considered Russia’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. His novel \u003ci\u003eThe Captain’s Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is available from NYRB Classics. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Chandler\u003c\/b\u003e has translated many NYRB Classics, including Vasily Grossman’s \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eStalingrad\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as Andrey Platonov’s \u003ci\u003eSoul \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBoris Dralyuk\u003c\/b\u003e’s most recent translations include Leo Tolstoy’s \u003ci\u003eLives and Deaths\u003c\/i\u003e and Andrey Kurkov’s \u003ci\u003eGrey Bees\u003c\/i\u003e. He is a translator of Maxim Osipov’s \u003ci\u003eRock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e and Lev Ozerov’s \u003ci\u003ePortraits Without Frames\u003c\/i\u003e, both published by NYRB Classics.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299956740325,"sku":"NP9781681375991","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681375991.jpg?v=1767734705","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/peter-the-greats-african-isbn-9781681375991","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}