Shorter Notices
The Artamonov Business. By Maxim Gorki. Translated by Alec Brown. (Hamish Hamilton. 6s.) THIS new translation (one of the excellent Novel Library series) of Gorki's best-known book has much to recommend it beside its moderate price. ' Apart from a slight muddling of relationship at the end and an occasional over-roughness in an attempt at raciness, it is a good pungent version, quite free from that sense of stilted foreign-ness that so many translations from the Russian convey. Gorki's violence and yet sensitiveness to un-materialistic values, his turbulent, characters yet poetic pictures of the countryside, his con- fusion of incident which yet falls into such clear-cut shape at the end—all come through in an extremely readable form. The theme of the rise and fall of a family of three generations and the grim little linen factory has an intrinsic interest ; it also gives a lively picture of Russia between the freeing of the serfs and the First World War. It is a pity that the translation of the title is somewhat ambiguous.
Previous page
