Nicolas and Maya have recently completed their translation of one of Tolstoy’s best-known and most widely read novels, Anna Karenina (scheduled to be published in 2026 by the Folio Society). Nicolas, a nephew of Nobel prizewinner Boris Pasternak, was a doctor by profession and after retirement has become a translator by choice. He has translated a plethora of Russian authors, his notable translations including Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lieutenant Kizhe by Yuri Tynyanov, and A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. Maya, a Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, is the author of books on Proust and La Fontaine, a novel, The Private Diary of Mr Darcy, and the translator of The Misanthrope, Tartuffe and Other Plays by Molière. Nicolas and Maya have collaborated on numerous translation projects.
I visited the Pasternak-Slaters at their residence in London to discuss the novel, obstacles that arose during the translation process, and the significance of engaging with Russian literature in the twenty-first century.
Olga Kenton
Olga Kenton: Let’s start with your thoughts about Anna Karenina. What does the book mean to you?
Nicolas Pasternak-Slater: There is no question that it is a superb novel. I read Anna Karenina as a student at Oxford, studying Russian, but never looked at it again. So when we began translating it sixty years later, it felt almost new to me, and I was immensely looking forward to diving into it. The experience of returning to that first sentence—“All happy families are alike”—evoked instant nostalgia.
Maya Slater: I absolutely love it—the brilliant opening that drops you right into the middle of a great drama. But I have also been constantly struck by the many different layers of comedy in Anna Karenina. I wrote a book on the humour in Marcel Proust, and I don’t know if it’s because of that, but while reading Anna Karenina, I noticed a very subtle and complex kind of comedy—one that Tolstoy uses in all sorts of interesting ways. There’s a scene where Vassenka goes hunting—it’s a farce from start to finish. His visit ends with him being carted off on a hay wagon, bouncing around ridiculously. One could write a whole chapter on the absurdity of that. Another moment that really struck me—something I noted in the introduction—is when Anna’s brother Stiva visits Karenin and finds Countess Lydia there, bossing everyone around. There’s also a faith healer there—a ridiculous Frenchman named Landau—whose role appears to be to fall asleep. If he does so, he will supposedly begin to prophesy. Stiva’s reaction to this situation is like, “what the hell is going on here?” The situation continues to become more exaggerated, culminating in Landau, while asleep, saying, ‘Send that man away. I don’t want him here.’ So Stiva is made to leave before any conclusion is reached. Afterwards there is a horrible little postscript: the next day, Karenin sends Stiva a letter categorically refusing to divorce Anna. That is her death warrant. So you go from absurd comedy straight to death.
NPS: It is extraordinary. There is this very authoritative biography that you were reading, Maya, that says Tolstoy had no sense of humour.
MS: Whereas he includes little humorous touches all the time. And then there is another thing—something I think is almost unique in Tolstoy—and that is how he conveys ecstasy and a kind of spiritual joy. For instance, the moment when Kitty has indicated to Levin that she’s going to accept him, and he’s waiting to go to see her parents to ask for her hand. And everything is just … perfect. Everyone around him seems to feel the same. That sort of ecstasy really comes through in Levin, who, I believe, is in many respects Tolstoy’s alter ego. He is the character who truly embodies it. And then there’s the scene when Levin goes scything with the peasants—again, that same lovely sense of ecstasy. I don’t think I’ve seen that kind of feeling captured so beautifully anywhere else.
OK: Has your perception of Anna Karenina changed since you read it when you were young? They often say that one’s view of the novel depends on the stage of life you are in when you read it. I’ve noticed this in myself. For instance, when I read it as a young woman, I didn’t like Alexey Karenin at all, but now I feel awfully sorry for him.
MS: That’s the brilliant thing Tolstoy does—he doesn’t try to make the character altogether sympathetic. I mean, physically, Alexey Karenin is revolting—the way he cracks his fingers all the time and how his ears stick out under his hat. But you are in his body too, and inside his thoughts.
NPS: There is a kind of movement—you’re outside Karenin, looking at him, being told that he looks grotesque. And then suddenly, you’re inside him. Even when you’re inside him, he’s still absurd at times—like when he’s a member of a governmental committee, and he is making these long, pompous speeches. That is also ridiculous. But then you also get his feelings. And suddenly, he becomes a real human being.
MS: But it doesn’t just leave Karenin there, does it? Because you go back to him later, and you have Countess Lydia—and that grotesque relationship where he just parrots whatever she says. He seems like a puppet in her hands, which, of course, is important because it helps explain why he becomes so savage to Anna. It’s constantly evolving and changing—you move in and out of Karenin. That’s such a good example of how Tolstoy treats his characters: he sees all sides of them. Suddenly they’re different, but it all still holds together. It’s extraordinary.
NPS: Actually, all three of these characters—Anna, Vronsky and Karenin—are deeply flawed. And you can feel that Tolstoy disapproves of all of them, particularly Vronsky. I really feel that Tolstoy dislikes him. At the same time, I think he also recognises that he himself—as a young officer in society—was that sort of man.
MS: Vronsky is obviously very sexy and charismatic, and he clearly has huge appeal.
NPS: The novel takes a very many-sided approach to all the characters. Anna, of course—when I first read it, I expect, though I can’t swear to it—I was probably a bit in love with her. She’s beautiful, she suffers; she has strong feelings, and so forth. But actually, she has many faults, and she’s criticised too. I’m sure that Tolstoy, with his moral code, disapproved of her greatly. He absolutely did not approve of adultery.
OK: Tolstoy said that when he wrote War and Peace, he wanted to explore the notion of the nation, while in Anna Karenina, his main aim was to focus on the family. Of course, he disapproved of adultery, though in real life, at least in his youth, he was exactly the same kind of man as Stiva, so to speak.
MS: This is something I have had a lot of trouble with because I read a huge, very detailed biography of him, and I was shocked by it. His behaviour towards his wife was atrocious. Then, in the book, the character that’s so interesting from this perspective is Dolly. Just to take one small example: Dolly says she can’t stand having children—she feels it’s draining her beauty and making her miserable. She’s got no money, she’s constantly worried about the children. You completely sympathise with her because she’s just a kind of reproducing machine. Then you read Tolstoy’s biography, and you see that Countess Sophia Andreyevna couldn’t stand having her 16 pregnancies and 11 living children. She said, “I can’t go on like this—I’m either pregnant or breastfeeding all the time. I just can’t stand it; I have to stop, we need to take some measures.” But Tolstoy responded, “No, a woman’s role is to bear a man’s children. I refuse to allow you to take any steps.’ So, Tolstoy as a novelist and as a person is completely different. It’s bewildering. It’s not fair to judge the character based on the writer’s biography, but I couldn’t help it.
OK: My next question is about the process of translating. What does it mean for you?
NPS: It means recreating a story in a way that is engaging and fluid for the English reader, while preserving the Russian flavour. A Russian story will inevitably include references to its cultural context. Sometimes, I’ve stuck to original terms like versty [verst], pudy [pood], when they help recreate the atmosphere; other times, I used miles and pounds instead. The important thing is that the text reads as naturally as if it were written in English, while retaining the Russian character of the original. That’s why I find it so useful to work with Maya as a co-translator—she’s an excellent English stylist who improves my work.
MS: The difference is that Nicolas does the translation first, and then I review it, reading it twice, making all sorts of suggestions. Then, we go over it a third time together—and quite often, we repeat this step twice. But the key point is that I find it useful not to work directly from Russian. My aim is to look at it if I was reading this as an English novel. My Russian is good enough, so if I say, ‘Well, you know that looks peculiar, I don’t think it works’ Nicolas can explain, ‘Yes, but the Russian makes it work,’ and since I know Russian well enough, I understand his point. It works quite well, I think.
OK: There aren’t many couples who work together as translators. How do you find collaborating with each other?
MS: We argue.
NPS: Yes, if we disagree, we argue and the more convincing argument wins. There are victories on both sides, but usually, one persuades the other. The deciding factor might be that one version sticks closer to the Russian while still working well in English—or, if not, that one reads naturally while the other feels awkward and makes the reader stumble. In that case, we choose the smoother version. Overall, we might begin from different starting points, but we’re both aiming for the same thing: a version which is faithful to the Russian and yet reads naturally as an original English text.
OK: Maya, once you’ve reviewed twice, does it go to another editor?
MS: No, it’s just the two of us. After we finish, it goes to the copy editor. I have a great admiration for good copy editors.
OK: What happens once it’s back from the copy editor?
NPS: Then we review their points, complaints, questions, and address them. Ultimately, the final arbiter is the translator. So, if we say, “We want it this way,” then that’s how it will be.
OK: Nicolas, when I read A Hero of Our Time in your translation, it felt so natural in English that sometimes I forgot I was reading a translation. The Russian language, being full of complex sentences, is structurally different from English, that doesn’t always translate smoothly in English. So my question is, how did you handle these differences? Are there techniques you used to preserve the original’s essence while making it work in English?
NPS: I’m certainly not trying to make readers feel they’re reading a Russian text. When Tolstoy does things which you can do in Russian, but you can’t really do in English, then I lose that. For instance, Russian is a highly inflected language, which allows for long sentences with convoluted syntax—where everything falls into place in the end. In English, such sentences often feel cumbersome. So I often break long sentences up into shorter ones, which feel more natural to an English reader.
Another technique Tolstoy uses for effect is repetition. On the very first page, for instance, where it is all about the family, he repeats the words dom [home], and domotchadtsy [household]. (I don’t think he even mentions sem’ya [family], semeystvo [family]). But anyway, the idea of family is very much repeated. In an endnote for another translation’s edition, I noticed they pointed out how this passage is saturated with the idea of home and family. In English, it’s important to avoid repetition. One feels very uncomfortable with a sentence where the same word recurs several times. However, Tolstoy feels very comfortable with it.
A silly example comes to mind. Before his wedding, Levin needs to stay away from Kitty’s house. He buys himself a kalach [a type of twisted white bread] for breakfast but can’t eat it—his mouth is too dry, and so forth. But the word kalach appears four times in that one sentence. In English, you can’t do that—I had to use it just once. I think I called it a ‘roll’ or something the first time, then just referred to it as ‘it’ on the next occasions.
Another example is in Tolstoy’s description of Petersburg society—how it splits into different cliques, interest groups, or influence groups. The words krug [circle] and kruzhok [little circle] come up about eighteen times in two short paragraphs. Unbelievable! We had to eliminate most of these repetitions when working on this passage. You inevitably lose something of the original because English and Russian are different languages with different stylistic standards or ideals.
MS: Then there’s the obvious challenge posed by ty [the informal ‘you’] and vy [the formal ‘you’]. Each time, you have to think of a solution that makes sense in English.
OK: So how did you handle ty and vy? There’s that episode in Anna Karenina where Vronsky and Anna avoid using the Russian ty and vy, switching instead to the French vous, because in French, it didn’t sound as cold and formal as vy does in Russian.
NPS: I remember that episode, though I can’t recall exactly how I translated it. The key point is that an English reader is usually familiar with French tu and vous, whereas they’re not familiar with the Russian equivalents. I likely explained that they moved into French where the difference between ty and vy is not so striking as it is in Russian. But, for instance, with someone like Stiva Oblonsky—who’s on easy terms with everyone and uses ty freely—I simply wrote ‘he was on first-name terms with everybody.’
OK: Maya, what do you think of Tolstoy’s use of French?
MS: His French is perfect. It’s completely bilingual. It’s formal French. But it is excellent.
NPS: We’ve been instructed to provide footnotes, translating French passages into English. While the Folio Society typically avoids footnotes, they’re necessary for foreign language content. Well, for simple phrases like “my belle-soeur,” I omitted translations. We assume the educated English reader will cope with it. But extended conversations require footnoted translations. German passages also need translation, as most English readers don’t know German. Ultimately, we have some discretion in deciding what to translate and what to leave as is.
OK: Tolstoy even has some English in Anna Karenina—like when Vronsky says, “It’s not in my line.” Did you do anything to emphasise that he’s speaking English here?
NPS: I certainly make it clear when Vronsky or anyone else lapses into English. I translated it as “‘Not in my line,’ he said in English”.
OK: Which literary qualities of Anna Karenina did you identify as being essential to convey?
MS: Tolstoy’s psychological understanding of his characters was groundbreaking for its time. Tolstoy knew Flaubert’s work, though, and Madame Bovary displays strikingly similar psychological intuition—especially regarding its female protagonist. But Tolstoy took things further: Madame Bovary’s suicide scene—while dramatic—lacks the devastating power of the scene in Anna Karenina.
NPS: I was considering other aspects as well. Take Tolstoy’s dialogue—he masterfully varies its register, depending on the speaker: whether Vronsky is addressing his groom, Karenin speaking to Anna, or Levin conversing with peasants. These nuanced dialogic layers present a significant challenge for a translator. You can’t just translate the words as they come. You must invent a register of discourse for each character. This recalls a previous Doctor Zhivago translation I found unsatisfactory—it mechanically converted Russian abstract nouns into highly unnatural English ones. I’ve used this example in a lecture, but it’s useful here. In a late novel scene, Lara reveals to Zhivago that Komarovsky seduced her. Then suddenly Zhivago asks about Komarovsky, naming the man. Lara blushes, and he asks her: “Why did you blush?” Lara responds, “Ot neprivychnosti i neozhidannosti.” The other translator rendered this literally as “from the unwontedness and unexpectedness.” No woman would ever use such stilted phrasing in conversation. I can’t remember exactly how I translated it, something like this: “I was taken by surprise – I’m not used to hearing that name from you,” avoiding those abstract nouns entirely.
OK: Given this context, how did you approach translating the linguistic register of the peasants in Anna Karenina?
NPS: I generally simplified the language. This represents a deliberate translation choice, though not all translators agree. A colleague of mine, an excellent translator, uses regional English accents for peasant dialogue. I find English regional dialects wholly unsuitable for Russian source material. So, I don’t do that.
OK: What was your approach to archaisms in the text?
NPS: Some terms are archaic only in the sense of being contemporary to the story’s period, like the Russian administrative hierarchy (generals, state councillors, etc.) These simply have to be translated directly, there’s no alternative. Then there are set translations, like “predvoditel’ dvoryanstva” becoming “Marshal of the Nobility.” In such cases, I adhered to standard usage.
OK: Does this mean that certain parts of the book would only be fully understood by native Russian speakers or those well familiar with Russian history and culture?
NPS: Certainly, these elements are deeply embedded in the Russian culture of the time. Readers have to take it for granted. The narrative immerses us in aristocratic Russia under an autocratic Tsar—that’s simply the given world of the story. This reminds me of Patrick O’Brien’s renowned naval novels set during the Napoleonic Wars—works brimming with authentic maritime terminology about masts, sails, guns and more. Readers simply need to accept this premise. There are relatively few footnotes included. As readers, we choose to immerse ourselves in that particular environment. The translator’s role isn’t to alter this experience or spoon-feed explanations to readers.
OK: Many translators prefer working with living authors because they can communicate directly with them to clarify meaning. This option disappears when translating deceased authors like Tolstoy. In your opinion, what are key advantages and disadvantages of translating deceased authors versus living ones?
NPS: I’ve worked with the highly reputable contemporary author Maxim Osipov, translating several of his works. We corresponded regularly via email. Typically, he would enquire about my translation choices—why I selected particular words or phrases. I would then explain my reasoning. He provided annotated texts with background information about certain things he describes. This collaboration was enjoyable and psychologically different from translating deceased authors. However, the practical translation process remains similar: I propose my translations, we discuss them, make revisions, and agree on final version—just as with any author. I don’t see a significant difference.
OK: Maya, what’s your take on this?
MS: This thought preoccupied me constantly: if Tolstoy could see us, he would be absolutely outraged.
OK: Really? What makes you say that?
MS: How dare we presume? He’d immediately seize control of his masterpiece. He was famously strong-willed and quick to anger, and, with his excellent English, he’d have disapproved thoroughly. He’d have insisted on doing it his way. Practically speaking, I’m relieved that we’re not dealing with Tolstoy himself.
NPS: During Tolstoy’s lifetime, two excellent translators worked on his texts: Constance Garnett and Aylmer Maude. I believe they both were in contact with him and received his approval for their translations—though I can’t confirm this with absolute certainty. This is reassuring in one sense—having English versions the author himself endorsed. Yet these translations don’t satisfy modern standards. After a century, new translations are necessary to meet contemporary expectations.
OK: I recall our conversation about Doctor Zhivago, where you mentioned preferring to read works in their original language, when possible, rather than relying on translations. Have you read other translators’ versions of Anna Karenina?
NPS: Did I read it in translation? No. But I had the two translations on hand. In fact, we had four. Often, if I was unsure of the meaning, I would check with their translations—though I also often corrected them, as they had mistranslated, and chose a different version. So, I started making copious notes about my disagreements with other translators. Sadly, in the interests of time and moving forward, I stopped doing that. So my translation notes only relate to the early part of the book.
OK: What aspects of the text did you find most challenging to translate?
NPS: I noted down a few examples—if you’d like, one of them is Kitty’s first ball.
Военный застёгивая перчатку, сторонился у двери и, приглаживая усы, любовался на розовую Кити.[1]
The two translations I’ve looked at used “pink Kitty.” To me, that’s absurd. So, I had to decide: What is Tolstoy conveying? After discussing it, we settled on “admired Kitty all in pink.” Because her dress was pink—not because she was blushing, or overheated, or anything else. It was simply her dress.
Next example: when Dolly and Anna are talking after the ball:
—Какая ты нынче странная! — сказала ей Долли.
— Я, ты находишь? Я не странная, но я дурная. Это бывает со мной. [2]
One translation reads, “I’m not strange, I’m bad,”—as if she means she’s “a bad person.” But “это бывает со мной” shows that she must mean something different. So I translated it as: “No, I’m not strange, but I feel wrong.”
OK: I agree—she said this not because she is a bad person, but because she feels that way, knowing she did something very wrong and it’s eating her.
NPS: Absolutely. Another example: Levin visits his dying brother Nikolai and is taken aback by his appearance: “и руки, и широкие кости казались всё огромнее” [3]. ”Руки” [arms] is clear, but “широкие кости”—what “broad bones” are we talking about? He is in a nightshirt. What bones are we looking at? I concluded it was probably a misprint for “широкие кисти” [broad wrists], but no other translator seems to have considered this. To me, the original made no sense—I’m sure my interpretation is correct.
And the last example: When the doctor comes to Prince Scherbatsky’s home to examine Kitty, he launches into a long pompous explanation, and Scherbatsky thinks ‘то-то пустобрёх,’ which is untranslatable. Interestingly, one translator, Rosamond Bartlett, did some research and discovered that “пустобрёх” is a term for a dog that barks too much, to no purpose, but it is also applied to a person who talks too much. In the text, Tolstoy specifies that this is a hunter’s term being used mockingly to describethe famous doctor.[4] Bartlett chose the English word “babbler,” claiming it can refer to dogs (though I’ve never heard of it in this sense) as well as to overly talkative people. Since it covers both meanings, she used it—though she needed a footnote to explain it, as an English reader wouldn’t recognise “babbler” as a term for a dog. I concluded that this Russian wordplay simply couldn’t be preserved in English, so I translated it as “what a windbag,” omitting the reference to it being a hunter’s term (windbag isn’t one). I generally believe it’s unwise in translation to discuss the use of language in Russian when it doesn’t apply in English. It becomes self-referential, drawing attention to the translation itself. For the sake of a flowing narrative, I dropped that mention of the hunter’s term entirely. These are all sort of policy decisions: whether to correct the original, omit something, and so forth.
OK: Given today’s geopolitical tensions, what has it been like to work on translating the Russian book?
MS: I felt relieved that they’d actually commissioned it. We couldn’t resist accepting the commission, though it took us two and a half years to complete. It was hard work.
NPS: The contradiction between the war, on one hand, and getting involved with Russian literature on the other, matters to publicists, publishers, and readers. Obviously, we hope that there will be peace as soon as possible. This is particularly important for us. We can’t deny the Russian heritage in our family. We very much want to visit Moscow, and also Odessa, where my family originally came from.
OK: I know you translated the great Russian authors such as Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev. Is there a particular author you’d like to translate or work with?
NPS: I was brought up on Russian classics rather than modern writers. I’ve struggled with modern texts. I was once asked to translate Zamyatin’s We. I felt somewhat daunted by the prospect. When the opportunity to translate Doctor Zhivago came up soon after, I chose that instead. (Although written later, the language of Doctor Zhivago is more classical). While I’ve read modern Russian literature, I don’t understand it well enough. The language has changed. I haven’t been exposed to contemporary colloquial Russian as spoken in Moscow or elsewhere. This makes translation of modern works difficult.
MS: There are two authors I absolutely love and would love to translate more of: Chekhov and Pushkin.
NPS: Well, I’ve translated Pushkin’s Journey to Arzrum, but it was published together with Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time; it didn’t receive significant attention.
MS: I’d love to translate The Captain’s Daughter or similar works, plus more of Chekhov’s short stories. They’re so beautiful – I’d really enjoy doing more of them.
OK: Thank you!
Olga Kenton is a writer and an early-career researcher. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham, where she currently teaches Russian in the Department of Modern Languages. In addition, Olga is a contributing lecturer at the Department of Film and Creative Writing. Her main research interests are Russian émigré literature, interviewing and creative nonfiction, translation as a creative writing practice, literary hybridity, and translingual creative writing. Olga’s latest publications: The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad (Academica Press, 2025) and the co-authored textbook Russian Language for Postgraduate Researchers: Intermediate to Advanced (Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2025).
[1] Leo Tolstoy, “Part One, Chapter 22,” Anna Karenina, Collection of works in eight volumes. Volume: 5.6. Moscow: Vocabulary, 1996, https://ilibrary.ru/text/1099/p.22/index.html.
[2] Leo Tolstoy, “Part One, Chapter 28,” Anna Karenina, Collection of works in eight volumes. Volume: 5.6. Moscow: Vocabulary, 1996, https://ilibrary.ru/text/1099/p.28/index.html
[3] Leo Tolstoy, “Part Five, Chapter 27,” Anna Karenina, Collection of works in eight volumes. Volume: 5.6. Moscow: Vocabulary, 1996, https://ilibrary.ru/text/1099/p.141/index.html
[4] «То-то пустобрех», — думал он, применяя в мыслях это название из охотничьего словаря к знаменитому доктору и слушая его болтовню о признаках болезни дочери. https://ilibrary.ru/text/1099/p.35/index.html
Inspiring read, thank you! Very much looking forward to reading the translation.