Product Description

A major new translation of one of the most enduring works of literature from the award- winning, bestselling translator of Anna Karenina

First published in 1844, The Three Musketeers is the most famous of Alexandre Dumas’s historical novels and one of the most popular adventure novels ever written. Dumas’s swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of d’Artagnan, a brash young man from the countryside who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to become a musketeer and guard to King Louis XIII. Before long, he finds treachery and court intrigue—and also three boon companions, the daring swordsmen Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Together the four strive heroically to defend the honor of their queen against the powerful Cardinal Richelieu and the seductive spy Milady.

Richard Pevear, part of the husband/wife team responsible for award-winning translations of classic Russian literature, provides a flavorful and faithful rendition that conveys all of the wit, romance, and rollicking pace of the original French. Pevear also includes an edifying introduction to Dumas, his world, and his take on history, as well as explanatory notes, making this the edition par excellence for a new generation of readers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #564935 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 736 pages

Review
“Brisk, agile . . . a heady mix of intrigue, action, and laughing-in-the-face-of-death badinage [all superbly rendered in this translation].”
—The New York Times Book Review

About the Author
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was a prolific author and adventurer who took part in the Revolution of 1830. His most popular works are The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Richard Pevear, with his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, has translated Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as well as the work of Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Chekhov. He has also translated from the French, Italian, and Greek. He teaches at the American University of Paris.

Customer Reviews

Huzzah!
An "endless adventure" breathlessly moving from one scene to the next: sword-fighting, court espionage, sex scandals, poisonings, assassinations, undying love and so on.

'Les Trois Mousquetaires', first published in 1844, was soon translated into three English versions by 1846. One of these, by William Barrow, is still in print and fairly faithful to the original, available in the Oxford World's Classics 1999 edition. However all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th century English standards of morality, thus making the scenes between d'Aragnan and Milady, for example, confusing and strange. The most recent and new standard English translation is by award-winning translator Richard Pevear (2006). Pevear says in his translation notes that most of the modern translations available today are "textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas's writing." Thankfully we have high quality translations like this one now available.

Pevear's Translation is the Best!!
Richard Pevear's translation of the Three Musketeers is without a doubt the best I have ever seen. His translation makes the story flow much easier and makes the language much more intelligible to modern readers. My hope is that he continues to translate Dumas' other works where the Musketeers also make an appearance. I would recommend this book to those who have already read previous translations and those who are new to the works of Alexandre Dumas.

A Classic Translation for a Classic Adventure
The Pevear/Volokhonsky team has been responsible for a minor Russian revolution (hoo-ha) in literature. Their brisk, highly accurate, wonderfully readable translations of Crime and Punishment, The Bros. Karamazov, Chekhov, and War and Peace make these tomes seem exciting and new , especially since most have made do with translations from the early 20th or even 19th centuries!

Now, Richard Pevear takes a crack at one of the most sheerly enjoyable books ever written, The Three Musketeers. I'd tried to read a version of this book some years back. It was pretty good, but it seemed to be one of those adventure stories trapped in another time, where what was once considered bold and exciting had slowly become covered in sepia and dust. But this translation makes everything seem bright, bold, and (because this is a French novel) wonderfully risque.

Political backstabbing, sex-as-revenge, noblemen hiding under assumed names, poisoned wine, battlefield lunches...in fact, I was surprised how much romance and history are intertwined in this novel. The main villain, Milady, (Quasi-SPOILER!)


managers to seduce an English Puritan who is guarding her through a combination of pious prayer and that sort of faux-naivete that involves low-cut dresses and heaving bosoms. Porthos is after a woman for her money, and D'artagnan falls in love with his landlord's wife. Hilarity typically ensues, though there is the occasional kidnapping and the old "hide 'em in a convent".

(End Quasi-Spoiler)

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a bit of a swashbuckler in them, or who likes their thrillers to have some actual literary merit (which this book does in spades).

I only ask that Mr. Pevear PLEASE turn his pen to the sequel to the Three Musketeers, the bluntly titled "Twenty Years Later". Who knows what we are missing?