[tomsem]

The problem is Amazon aggregates reviews from different translations as if they referred to the same book.

The book description itself should be accurate but may not always tell you who did the translation. ‘Look inside’ should let you see title pages, or download samples to review them before purchase.

The Pervear+Volokhonsky translations (of Russian literature) are well regarded by most. Of course, since they are still alive and expect to get paid for their work, one pays more for them than for translations in the public domain.

Speaking of War and Peace in particular, about 2% of it is in French (reflecting speech of educated Russians at the time). Some translations replace the French with English translations, some do so partially (Garnett) and some retain the original French (Pervear/Volokhonsky provides English translations as footnotes). Some revisions of translations which did not preserve original French restore it.

I suppose we should be happy to have so many choices, but it can be a bit confusing, even without taking into consideration the potential for typos and inferior digital formatting.