The First New Translation in Forty Years
Set sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogol s epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulba s two sons.
As Robert Kaplan writes in his Introduction, Taras Bulba] has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly evil violence that is far beyond anything that Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like Taras Bulba...

In this splendid new translation of Voltaire's satiric masterpiece, all the celebrated wit, irony, and trenchant social commentary of one of the great works of the Enlightenment is restored and refreshed.
Voltaire may have cast a jaundiced eye on eighteenth-century Europe-a place that was definitely not the "best of all possible worlds." But amid its decadent society, despotic rulers, civil and religious wars, and other ills, Voltaire found a mother lode of comic material. And this is why Peter Constantine's thoughtful translation is such a pleasure, presenting all the book's...