The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1 of 2)
Snipers, secret police and samurai
Dear classics reader,
Through this week’s hidden peephole you will find:
A round-up of Second World War classics for Remembrance Day;
A note on the different English translations of The Brothers Karamazov;
Birthday wishes to Carlo Emilio Gadda;
A round-up of new classics, published yesterday;
A preview of coming attractions;
And our first discussion of Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea – with some thoughts on Bushidō, the Way of the Warrior.
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Second World War classics
This time last year we discussed First World War classics. This year, to mark Remembrance Day, here is a round-up of classics that feature the Second World War.
The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (1985)
In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich set out to write her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, when she realized that she grew up surrounded by women who had fought in the Second World War but whose stories were absent from official narratives. Travelling thousands of miles, she spent years interviewing hundreds of Soviet women - captains, tank drivers, snipers, pilots, nurses and doctors - who had experienced the war on the front lines, on the home front and in occupied territories. As it brings to light their most harrowing memories, this symphony of voices reveals a different side of war, a new range of feelings, smells and colours.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 384 pages | translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
[US] Random House | 384 pages | translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard (1984)
Based on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy’s life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai – a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint. Rooted as it is in the author’s own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.
[UK] Harper Perennial | 336 pages | introduced by John Lanchester
[US] Simon & Schuster | 288 pages
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (written 1959, published 1980)
A book judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state, Life and Fate is an epic tale of World War II and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominated the twentieth century. Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Vasily Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope.
[UK] Vintage Classics | 912 pages | translated by Robert Chandler
[US] NYRB Classics | 896 pages | translated by Robert Chandler
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel’s strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller’s classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn’t have to; but if he doesn’t want to he must be sane and has to. That’s some catch . . .
[UK] Vintage Classics | 544 pages
[US] Simon & Schuster | 544 pages | introduced by Christopher Buckley
Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal (1965)
For gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front; the problem of ridding himself of his burdensome innocence; and the awesome scandal of Dispatcher Hubicka’s gross misuse of the station’s official stamps upon the telegraphist’s anatomy. Beside these, Milos’s part in the plan for the ammunition train seems a simple affair.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 96 pages | translated by Edith Pargeter
[US] Abacus Books | 128 pages | translated by Edith Pargeter
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi (1982)
In the final days of World War II, a courageous band of Jewish partisans makes its way from Russia to Italy, moving toward the ultimate goal of Palestine. Based on a true story, If Not Now, When? chronicles their adventures as they wage a personal war of revenge against the Nazis: blowing up trains, rescuing the last victims of concentration camps, scoring victories in the face of unspeakable devastation. Primo Levi captures the landscape and the people of Eastern Europe in vivid detail, depicting as well the terrible bleakness of war-ridden Europe. But finally, what he gives us is a tribute to the strength and ingenuity of the human spirit.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 352 pages | translated by William Weaver | introduced by Mark Mazower
[US] Penguin Classics | 352 pages | translated by William Weaver | introduced by Irving Howe
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1949)
Based on Mailer’s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, The Naked and the Dead is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare. Focusing on the experiences of a fourteen-man platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific during World War II, and written in a journalistic style, it tells the moving story of the soldiers’ struggle to retain a sense of dignity amidst the horror of warfare, and to find a source of meaning in their lives amisdst the sounds and fury of battle.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 688 pages
[US] Picador | 736 pages
Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein (1947)
April 1945, the last days of the Nazi regime. While bombs are falling on Berlin, the Gestapo still search for traitors, resistance fighters and deserters. People mistrust each other more than ever. In the midst of chaos, a disparate group - a disillusioned young soldier; a trade unionist and saboteur; a doctor helping refugees - continues to fight back. And in Oskar Klose’s pub, the resistance plan their next move, hunted at every step by the SS. Published in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Berlin Finale is an unforgettable portrait of life in a city devastated by war.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 672 pages | translated by Shaun Whiteside
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Billy Pilgrim – hapless barber’s assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier – has become unstuck in time. Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out? Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency.
[UK] Vintage Classics | 192 pages
[US] Dial Press | 288 pages
Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh (1952-61 individual volumes, 1965 revised trilogy)
Waugh’s own unhappy experience of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during the war years 1939-45. High comedy - in the company of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook or the denizens of Bellamy’s Club - is only part of the shambles of Crouchback’s war. When action comes in Crete and in Yugoslavia, he discovers not heroism, but humanity. Sword of Honour combines three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender, which were originally published separately. Extensively revised by Waugh, they were published as the one-volume Sword of Honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished them to be read.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 928 pages | introduced by Martin Stannard
[US] Back Bay Books | 800 pages
Note. Much of the literature of the Second World War deals with the Holocaust. I have deliberately not included that aspect of the war in this round-up above: I plan to share a dedicated round-up of Holocaust literature in late January, for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The book descriptions above are taken from the publishers’ online blurbs.
The Brothers Karamazov translations
Over the course of 2026, we will be reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, from January to December. I’m really looking forward to it! (More information here.) And several people have been getting in touch to ask which translation we’ll be using.
The answer is: you don’t need to have a particular translation to join our read-along. If you already have a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, you can read that one. We will be reading the same chapters at the same time, and it will be interesting to have a range of English translations to compare.
But if you haven’t already got hold of your copy, you will need to choose which one to read. There are five easily available English translations. Here is a little bit about each one, with my choice at the bottom:
Constance Garnett (1912)
The first English translation was by Constance Garnett, the prolific translator and wife of Edward Garnett. Her translation has been revised several times over the last hundred years. Today Garnett’s translation is published by Wordsworth Classics and is out of copyright, so it is also available for free online.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1990)
Husband and wife team Pevear and Volokhonsky, the Lennon and McCartney of Russian-to-English translators (see The Unwomanly Face of War above), produced their translation of Karamazov 35 years ago and it is still in print with Vintage Classics in the UK and Picador in the US. Pevear and Volokhonsky are praised for reproducing the rhythms and cadences of the original Russian, but some find this accuracy makes for translations that are sometimes less readable in English.
David McDuff (1993)
David McDuff produced a translation for Penguin Classics in 1993, replacing their 1958 translation by David Magarshack. McDuff’s translation has a distinctively literary style, somewhat similar to English novels of the nineteenth century.
Ignat Avsey (1994)
The following year, the Latvian translator Ignat Avsey’s version was published by Oxford World’s Classics, with the title The Karamazov Brothers. Avsey’s version strikes a relaxed balance between readability and accuracy.
Michael R. Katz (2023)
Most recently, Michael R. Katz has written a new translation for Liveright, which has been widely praised. The New Yorker called it ‘the voiciest translation of the novel thus far’ – and the Guardian called it ‘lucid and unpretentious’.
This London Review of Books review and this blog article are useful guides to the differences between the five translations. (The blog article is by Patrick Bergman, who translated The Brothers Karamazov into Swedish.)
I got myself copies of the McDuff, the Avsey and the Katz and – after dipping into all three and weighing up their styles – I plan to read the Ignat Avsey translation in Oxford World’s Classics.
For me Avsey’s fluent style promises the most enjoyable reading experience – and I also personally like the layout and formatting of the World’s Classics editions. So if you would like to read the same translation as me, that’s the one I’ll be reading.
Happy Birthday Carlo Emilio Gadda
In other news, today, 14 November, was the Italian author Carlo Emilio Gadda’s birthday. He would have been 132 years old today.
Gadda was a Milanese electrical engineer who helped to construct the Vatican power station for Pope Pius XI. He became a full-time author after the Second World War, writing experimental novels and short stories. His style has been described as ‘baroque’, says the scholar G. M. Carsaniga, ‘but it is in fact more like a medieval writer’s, for whom words are substances, things endowed with magical creative and regenerative powers, not mere substitutes for real objects or flimsy labels for flimsier ideas.’ Gadda is perhaps best remembered for his novel La cognizione del dolore or The Experience of Pain.
The Experience of Pain by Carlo Emilio Gadda (1963)
Gonzalo is a highly educated man living alone with his ageing, widowed mother in a town scarred by war. He rages against the world. The doctor tells him to get out more. But his frustration starts to erupt in increasingly ferocious and unexpected ways, with disastrous consequences. Set in a fictional South American country, Carlo Emilio Gadda’s intensely personal, visceral novel was written at the height of Fascist rule in Italy, tearing apart language itself to explore the violence and chaos of the darkest of times.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 256 pages | translated by Richard Dixon
What’s new this week?
Yesterday saw the publication of several new classics editions, including new translations of Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu’s Blinding and Brigitte Reimann’s Women in the Pillory, a new anthology – The Penguin Book of Existential Philosophy – and, of particular interest to anyone who joined our recent read-along of Beloved, a new edition of Morrison’s essay The Site of Memory, beautifully produced as a pamphlet by Silver Press.
Blinding by Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu (1996)
Beneath the streets of communist Bucharest linger hidden passageways, lost to memory. Here, sprawling hospitals give way to travelling circuses and underground jazz clubs, and Cǎrtǎrescu’s childhood, prehistory and visionary fever dreams are woven into the landscape of the city, haunted by secret police and zombie hoards. Part visceral dream-memoir, part phantasmic pilgrimage, Blinding is one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a fascinating, kaleidoscopic journey into the past.
[UK] Penguin International Writers | 432 pages | translated by Sean Cotter
[US] Archipelago | 462 pages | translated by Sean Cotter
Thereafter Johnnie by Carolivia Herron (1991)
The Snowdon family stands as a pinnacle of Black excellence in Washington, D.C.: educated, affluent, and influential. John Christopher, the patriarch, saves lives as a heart surgeon and is revered by his students at Howard University. His ought to be a story of success and empowerment, but something is rotten in the house of Snowdon. Years later, when John Christopher’s granddaughter Johnnie comes to seek the truth about her own parentage, she unveils a legacy of unspeakable family secrets tangled up in America’s original sin. What begins as a quest for identity spirals into an apocalyptic vision of a nation on the brink of ruin. By turns a poetic epic, a ghost story, a historical saga, and a chilling dystopian fable, Thereafter Johnnie is a unique and uniquely American fusion of myth and hard-bitten reality: an erotic, horrifying, and even hopeful reckoning with centuries of injustice.
[US] McNally Editions | 256 pages
Mars in Aries by Alexander Lernet-Holenia (1941)
Vienna, 1939. Lieutenant Wallmoden is preparing to take part in a mysterious ‘military exercise’ when he meets the austerely beautiful Baroness Pistohlkors and her elusive circle of acquaintances. He promises to see her again – but then discovers his company has been mobilised for war. Marching across Europe, stumbling across the border between the living and the dead, one constant remains: he must keep his tryst with the Baroness, in this world or the next. Banned by the Nazis and almost lost, Mars in Aries is an erotically charged ghost story, a shocking account of the invasion of Poland, and a mesmeric exploration of time and fate.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 208 pages | translated by Robert Dassanowsky and John Barrett
[US] Ariadne Press | 194 pages | translated by Robert Dassanowsky and Elisabeth Littell Frech
The New Negro edited by Alain Locke (1925)
The New Negro: An Interpretation is a multidisciplinary anthology of poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, art, and philosophy woven together into a seamless statement of Black agency in the arts and humanities that became, upon its publication in 1925, an instant publishing success. Edited by Alain Locke, a man known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance, the text is a powerful, provocative, and affecting anthology of writers who shaped the Harlem Renaissance movement and who help us to consider the evolution of the African American in society. With works by Black voices such as Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and W. E. B. DuBois, Locke constructed a vivid look at the changing African American, finding their place in the ever shifting sociocultural landscape that was 1920s America.
[UK] Oxford World’s Classics | 512 pages | introduced by Jeffrey C. Stewart
[US] Scribner | 496 pages | introduced by Arnold Rampersad
The Site of Memory by Toni Morrison (1995)
The Site of Memory describes Toni Morrison’s work of literary archaeology. She offers insights into how she arrives at a text through the act of imagination bound up with memory and shows how she explores two worlds – the actual and the possible – via the nimbus of emotion surrounding the journey of an image: from picture to meaning to text. Exploring the radical possibilities of literature and the limits of history, Morrison finds a truth deeper than documentation in the silences and omissions in African American narratives of the past. Fiction, for Morrison, is a practice of ethical restoration: a means to recover what history has neglected through the ‘flooding’ of a rush of imagination. In The Site of Memory, ancestral presence, emotion and imagination converge. If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
[UK / US] Silver Press | 32 pages
Woman in the Pillory by Brigitte Reimann (1956)
Kathrin – five years into a disenchanting marriage – struggles to work the farm with her sister-in-law while her husband Heinrich is away fighting for the Third Reich. To help them with the harvest, Heinrich arranges for Alexei, a Russian prisoner of war, to labour in the fields. Though initially suspicious of this watchful stranger, Kathrin is soon drawn to Alexei, with ruinous consequences.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 160 pages | translated by Lucy Jones
From Man to Man or Perhaps Only— by Olive Schreiner (1926)
Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man or Perhaps Only—, unfinished at the time of her death and posthumously published in 1926, tells the story of two white women born into the racist society of mid-nineteenth-century South Africa. One sister remains in the British Cape Colony and finds a way to deal with her husband’s infidelities. The other, raped at age 15, is hounded out of her insular white South African community, and becomes a kept woman in London’s East End. Addressing the ill-effects of a male-dominated imperial capitalism, and positing an equivalence between marriage and prostitution in a society where women’s function is primarily sexual, the novel foregrounds the perspective of a young black girl in order to place before its readers the vision of what Schreiner called an “expanded and enlarged humanity”.
[UK / US] Oxford World’s Classics | 592 pages | introduced by Dorothy Driver
The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy (1843-1964)
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a group of intellectuals gathered to discuss urgent questions of existence, commitment, racism, colonialism and feminism. Their ideas would continue to shape debates throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This major new anthology gathers the key texts of existentialism, and their major intellectual influences, along with other works previously neglected in overviews and anthologies of the movement. Incorporating the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon, alongside selections from Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger, it significantly expands and redefines our understanding of what existentialism means, and why it matters.
[UK / US] Penguin Classics | 400 pages | introduced by Jonathan Webber
The book descriptions above are taken from the publishers’ online blurbs.
Coming Attractions
If you would like a sneak preview of our upcoming monthly read-alongs, you can take a peak here.
Next month we will be reading Dubliners by James Joyce over four weeks (with a week off for Christmas): we’ll start on Friday 28 November. More details here.
And if you’re wracking your brains for the perfect Christmas present, look no further than the Hatchards Classic Book Club annual book subscription. You (or a friend) could receive all the books we read each month here on Read the Classics, beautifully gift-wrapped and delivered to your door, anywhere in the world, as well as a year’s complimentary subscription to Read the Classics, so you can choose to read along with us, if you wish. To find out more, follow this link or email Hatchards directly: subscriptions@hatchards.co.uk
