Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1) The idiot
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
The most autobiographical novel by the author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov--and the namesake of Elif Batuman's debut novel, The Idiot Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive epileptic Prince Myshkin-- known as the "idiot"--pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
A monumental new translation--the first in more than twenty years--of Russia's greatest family drama, rendered with all the passion, humor, and soul of the original. Dostoevsky's final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his sons--the eponymous brothers Karamazov--and...
5) The gambler
Author
Language
English
Description
"In this short novel, Fyodor Dostoevsky tells the story of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young tutor working in the household of an imperious Russian general. Alexey tries to break through the wall of the established order in Russia, but instead becomes mired in the endless downward spiral of betting and loss. His intense and inescapable addiction is accentuated by his affair with the General's cruel yet seductive niece, Polina. In The Gambler, Dostoevsky...
7) Demons
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A pair of self-styled revolutionaries and their followers plot to overthrow the Tsar and seize control of the government in Dostoyevsky's compelling tale of ideology and murder in 19th-century Russia. Based on a real-life political assassination, the story unfolds in a fictional town in which Stavrogin, a power-hungry cynic, and Pyotr, a radical willing to go to any lengths for his ideals, take charge of a crew of anarchists, nihilists, and other...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The two original short novels brought together here - in new translations by award-winning translators - were both literary gambles of a sort for Dostoevsky. The Double, written in Dostoevsky's youth, was a sharp turn away from the realism of his first novel, Poor Folk. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelganger...
Author
Language
English
Description
A new translation of The Possessed and a new title to go with it. The translators claim it better reflects the spirit of what basically is a novel of ideas, the demons of the title being the Western imports of idealism, socialism, materialism, nihilism, atheism and so on.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"In 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for his participation in a utopian socialist discussion group. The account he wrote after his release, based on notes he smuggled out, was the first book to reveal life inside the Russian penal system. The book not only brought him fame but also founded the tradition of Russian prison writing. Notes from a Dead House (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead)...
Author
Language
English
Description
This excerpt from the Russian literary masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov is a parable set against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition, which Dostoyevsky uses to explore questions about God's existence and human freedom. This bite-size text is a great way for beginners to acquaint themselves with Dostoyevsky's style.
16) Poor Folk
Author
Language
English
Description
Delve into the always-timely issue of poverty and socio-economic marginalization in the first novel by acclaimed Russian fiction writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Poor Folk recounts the trials and tribulations—and all-too-rare moments of triumph—experienced by several groups of destitute peasants in nineteenth-century Russia.
Author
Language
English
Description
Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky is regarded by scholars and critics as one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century. His deeply philosophical novels present a nuanced look at some of the psychological struggles that men and women face. This novel, set against the backdrop of the initial rumblings of revolution in Imperial Russia, delves into the motivations that inspire extreme political ideologies.
Author
Language
English
Description
"The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the "wicked and sentimental" Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons--the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, its social and spiritual...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal...
20) The adolescent
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The narrator and protagonist of Dostoevsky's novel The Adolescent" "(first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father's wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and...