Short Fiction | Translation Bilingual Edition: Russian and English |
Translated by Boris Dralyuk Foreword by Brian Evenson |
$15/book. Print runs limited. See our shipping rates.
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“The greatest story that the literature of the world knows.”
—James Joyce
“How Much Land Does a Man Need is a small gem, a story that feels at once quickly recited and very sure of itself, and Calypso Editions and Boris Dralyuk are to be congratulated for giving it a new and better English-language life.”
—Brian Evenson
News, Events & Reviews
News
- 02/18/2011, “How Much Land Does a Man Need,” by Rachel Hurn, The New Yorker‘s feature, The Book Bench.
- 02/15/2011, “A Tract for Our Time, and All Time,” by Michael Potemra, National Review Online. Picked up by the Wall Street Journal.
- 01/18/2011, “Calypso Editions,” Three Percent, the blog of Open Letter Books, by director Chad W. Post
Reviews
- Review, Spring, 2012, Slavic and East European Journal, Professor Thomas Gaiton Marullo, University of Notre Dame
- Review, 05/13/2011, “Wilson’s Bookmarks,” Christianity Today
- Review, 03/11/2011, “Transcending All Physical, Psychological, and Cultural Frontiers: Calypso Editions’ Translation of Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need,” AndiLit
- Review, 03/22/11, Literalab, “Letting Tolstoy Tell His Tale“
- Review 02/04/2011, The Reading Life, “‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’ by Leo Tolstoy Debut Publication of Calypso Editions“
- Review 01/2011, Web Del Sol Review of Books, “Found in Translation: Tolstoy’s Moral Tale is Alive in English” by Ilya Kaminsky & Kathryn Farris
- Review 12/24/10, The Times Literary Supplement by Tadzio Koelb
Readings
- Reading, 2/10/11, 7 p.m., Brooklyn, N.Y.: Chin Music Reading Series at Pacific Standard Bar celebrates the Tolstoy Centennial with the launch of Calypso Editions’ inaugural title, Leo Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need. Featuring readings in the original Russian from celebrated poets Polina Barskova and translator Boris Dralyuk. Series curated by Bryan Patrick Miller. Read the Press Release.
About the Book
Calypso Editions presents a new translation of this frequently overlooked classic. In How Much Land Does a Man Need, originally published in 1886, Tolstoy departs from the realist mode of his great novels—War and Peace and Anna Karenina—and adopts the markedly oral narrative style of skaz, a language at once rich and easily accessible to the simple folk he now wished to address. While previous translators have smoothed out the idiosyncrasies of the form, Boris Dralyuk’s translation retains the color and voice so vital to the tale.
Unlike the elite that populate Tolstoy’s novels, here Tolstoy introduces readers to a peasant, Pakhom, who swore that with enough land, he wouldn’t fear the devil himself.
The devil sat behind the stove and heard everything. He was glad the peasant woman led her husband to boasting that if he had land, the devil couldn’t take him.
“All right,” he thought, “we’ll make a bet; I’ll give you lots of land. And it’s the land I’ll take you with.”
The story is as engrossing as Pakhom’s insatiable need for land. This new translation aims to reintroduce and reinvigorate this classic.
About the Author: Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is a Russian author regarded as one of the world’s finest novelists. The short story, How Much Land Does a Man Need, was penned long after his ambitious novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina and within a year of his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
About the Translator: Boris Dralyuk is completing his PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA. His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of literary and academic journals, including Poetry International, Zeek, Slavic and East European Journal, and Russian History. He and David Stromberg have recently translated and edited Polina Barskova’s The Zoo in Winter: Collected Poems, to be released by Melville House in February 2011.
Shipping Information and Rates
In stock and shipping
To U.S. addresses: Free
To Canada: $1/book
To international addresses: Discounted flat rate of $6 per book. Multiple orders qualify for an additional shipping discount.