My Life and Thoughts

Although many different editions and translations were consulted and quoted in The Possessed, one doesn’t like to write a book about the universality of great literature without acknowledging the ingenuity and hard work of at least some of the translators on whom such universality depends.  I am particularly grateful to Peter Constantine, Rosemary Edmonds, James Falen, Constance Garnett, Robert A. Maguire, Vladimir Nabokov, Burton Raffell, John E. Woods, and, last but not least, Richard Pevear and Larisa Volokhonsky, whose magnificent translation has granted the English-reading world unprecedented access to Dostoevsky’s Demons.

As regards the small number of Russian translations I came up with myself, I would like to thank both Luba Golburt and Gregory Freidin for their help, while exonerating them from any inaccuracies, which are certainly my own doing.