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Title: Still the Best
Review: Superb. I put off reading this book for something like 20 years, but it was worth the wait.Worth the weight, too. It's damned hefty.Tolstoy's passages on historiography and the philosophy of free will, mingled with the narrative, often come in for attack. I say, the only rule for writing novels is that there are no rules! Tolstoy's excursions into non-fiction within a work of fiction are just fine by me.Mrs. Garnett's translations of the whole shelf of Russian classics are no longer the most current, but I think they're still the best. They carry the scent of their times (early 20th century) which is simply much closer to the times these books were written than any modern translation can provide. It's frank, manly English. The original comes through strongly, and the translation doesn't call attention to itself.
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