Oliver James Ready | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 April 1976 Pembury, Kent |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Oliver James Ready (born 17 April 1976) is a British Slavist, Russian-English translator.
In 1994–1998, he studied Modern Languages (Russian and Italian) at Worcester College, Oxford. In 2000–2001, he did MA in Russian Studies at SSEES, University College London. In 2007, he completed his DPhil at Wolfson College, Oxford. [1]
In 2008–2017, he was Consultant Editor for Russian and East-Central Europe at The Times Literary Supplement. [2]
Since 2010, he has been a Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. [3] In 2011–2014, he was director of the Russkiy Mir Program.
Since 2014, he has been working as a teacher of Russian literature at the University of Oxford. [2]
Oliver Ready came to the attention of the general public in 2014 when his translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment was published. In a review with the telling title "This new translation of Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece", the writer and critic A. N. Wilson writes: "Sometimes, though, a new translation really makes us see a favourite masterpiece afresh", which is followed by claims that Ready's translation is better than the classic translations of Constance Garnett and David Magarshak. [4]
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its émigrés, and to Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different ethnic origins, including bilingual writers, such as Kyrgyz novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov. At the same time, Russian-language literature does not include works by authors from the Russian Federation who write exclusively or primarily in the native languages of the indigenous non-Russian ethnic groups in Russia, thus the famous Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov is omitted.
Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his mature period of writing and is often cited as one of the greatest works of world literature.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1866.
The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1860 to 1862 in the journal Vremya by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It has also been published in English under the titles Notes from the House of the Dead, Memoirs from the House of the Dead and Notes from a Dead House, which are more literal translations of the Russian title.
The Brothers Karamazov, also translated as The Karamazov Brothers, is the last novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880. Dostoevsky died less than four months after its publication. It has been acclaimed as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.
Constance Clara Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to render numerous volumes of Anton Chekhov's work into English and the first to translate almost all of Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction into English. She also rendered works by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Alexander Herzen into English. Altogether, she translated 71 volumes of Russian literature, many of which are still in print today.
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. His novel Petersburg (1913/1922) was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as the third-greatest masterpiece of modernist literature. The Andrei Bely Prize, one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him. His poems were set to music and performed by Russian singer-songwriters.
Andreas William Heinesen was a poet, writer, composer and painter from the Faroe Islands.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are literary translators best known for their collaborative English translations of classic Russian literature. Individually, Pevear has also translated into English works from French, Italian, and Greek. The couple's collaborative translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize.
Dedalus Books is an independent publishing company based in Cambridgeshire, England. Publisher Eric Lane has said, "We like the bizarre, the grotesque, the surreal and the clever, preferably in the same book. We call this kind of book, distorted reality. For instance David Madsen’s Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf, Sylvie Germain’s The Book of Night and Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During. Three perfect examples of what we are looking for." Prize-winning Dedalus writers have included novelist Andrew Crumey and translator Margaret Jull Costa.
David McDuff is a Scottish translator, editor and literary critic.
David Magarshack was a British translator and biographer of Russian authors, best remembered for his translations of Dostoevsky and Nikolai Gogol.
Crime and Punishment is a manga by Osamu Tezuka, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's book Crime and Punishment that was published in 1953. In 1990 The Japan Times published a bilingual edition featuring an English translation by Frederik Schodt in Student Times. In Russia it was licensed by Comics Factory and was published in March 2011.
The Rossica Translation Prize is a biennial award given to an exceptional published translation of a literary work from Russian into English. It is the only prize in the world for Russian to English literary translations.
Yury Vasilyevich Buida is a Russian author. In 1994 his novel The Zero Train was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize. His short story collection The Prussian Bride won the Apollon Grigoriev Prize in 1999, and its translation by Oliver Ready won the Rossica Translation Prize in 2005.
The themes in the writings of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, which consist of novels, novellas, short stories, essays, epistolary novels, poetry, spy fiction and suspense, include suicide, poverty, human manipulation, and morality. Dostoevsky was deeply Eastern Orthodox and religious themes are found throughout his works, especially in those written after his release from prison in 1854. His early works emphasised realism and naturalism, as well as social issues such as the differences between the poor and the rich. Elements of gothic fiction, romanticism, and satire can be found in his writings. Dostoyevsky was "an explorer of ideas", greatly affected by the sociopolitical events which occurred during his lifetime. After his release from prison his writing style moved away from what Apollon Grigoryev called the "sentimental naturalism" of his earlier works and became more concerned with the dramatization of psychological and philosophical themes.
Eugene Ivanov is a Russian-Czech contemporary artist, painter, graphic artist and illustrator. Since 1998 he has been living and working in Prague, Czech Republic.
Vladimir Alexandrovich Sharov was a Russian novelist who was awarded the Russian Booker Prize in 2014 for his novel Return to Egypt.
The Read Russia Prize awards are made every two years for outstanding translations of Russian literature into foreign languages.
