Books by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Book SynopsisIn June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see firsthand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting Russia. Over the course of his journey he visited a number of major cities, including Berlin, Paris, London, Florence, Milan, and Vienna. His impressions on what he saw, "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions", were first published in the February 1863 issue of Vremya (Time), the periodical he edited.Trade ReviewImportant as an early statement of some of Dostoevsky's favourite concepts, and interesting as an example of his acid journalistic style. * The New York Review of Books *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have given us the definitive version of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s strikingly original short novels, The Double and The Gambler.The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare-foreshadowing Kafka and Sartre-in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelganger, a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him with his friends and colleagues. The Gambler is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction to gambling, a compulsion that Dostoevsky-who once gambled away his young wife's wedding ring-knew intimately from his own experience. In chronicling the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Second Edition of the Norton Critical Edition of The Brothers Karamazov is based on a significantly revised translation by Susan McReynolds.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis collection gives us a sense of the depth of Dostoevsky's insights into human life and suffering and of his profound understanding of the tensions and dangers of modernity. Guignon's Introduction is a brilliant study that shows how profoundly the 'legend of the Grand Inquisitor' speaks to our day. --Charles Taylor, McGill UniversityGuignon's Introduction is by far the best available to these texts, and is, for its clarity and depth, one of the finest Introductions to complex literary or philosophical material that I've ever read. --Stephen L. Collins, Babson CollegeThis text worked beautifully in my Intro to the Western Humanities course. I especially appreciated Guignon's insightful Introduction, the selection of chapters, the clear layout. --Dan Spencer, University of Montana

Read more less

Book SynopsisA seemingly well-reasoned justification of murder comes to pieces as the murderer is forced to confront the true nature of his crime. After much thought Rodion Raskolnikov determines that certain special people deserve the right to step outside of normal law and order to accomplish difficult deeds for the good of others and even humanity as a whole. Trapped in desperate poverty, he justifies his plan to rob and kill a rich, unpopular pawnbroker, reasoning that he will take the money, survive and go on to do good things for others. The terrible act of murder, and the unstoppable cascade of events that follow, throw Raskolnikov into a nightmare of mental unbalance and moral torment. One situation after another arises that drives home his guilt and shows how his brutal act has resulted in nothing but destruction and pain. A surprise visit from family and a policeman who seems teasingly, sardonically aware of his guilt thrust Raskolnikov into a position where he can’t tell if even confession will supply meaningful redemption. First published in 1866, Crime and Punishment stands as one of the most acclaimed novels of all time and remains unsurpassed in its penetrating psychology and raw glimpses of a mind wracked by moral confusion and fundamental questions of how to do the right thing. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Crime and Punishment is both modern and readable.

Read more less

Book Synopsis'I have always been ridiculous, and I have known it, perhaps from the hour I was born'A man goes mad because he is happy.A civil servant behaves like a monster at a wedding-party.A man is swallowed by a crocodile, but not eaten nor seriously damaged.Dostoevsky's stories inhabit similarly volcanic atmospheres as his novels, places of curiosity and exception. They resemble jokes and anecdotes, told by volatile, voluble, morbidly sensitive and frustrated characters. These narrators all have a tendency to express themselves in crescendos of conflicting emotions, while the stories themselves steer clear of grand conclusions. Michael Wood's selection of Dostoevsky's shorter works is drawn from the timeless translations of Constance Garnett whose work, he says in his preface, gives readers the best of several worlds.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe illegitimate son of a landowner and his common-law peasant wife, Arkady Dolgoruky has scarcely seen these parents during his nineteen years of life. In a narrative combining farce and pathos, Dostoevsky describes Arkady's visit to St Petersburg in search of the 'accidental family' who have dominated his dreams. The confrontation with them does not turn out quite as he imagined it. This relatively late novel, written in the last decade of the author's life, nevertheless captures the exuberance and embarrassments, the bliss and bale of adolescence in all its volatility and uncertainty.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhite Nights and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by the renowned Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky. The book includes various stories, each exploring different themes and characters. The first and most famous story in the collection is White Nights, which tells the tale of a lonely man who falls in love with a young woman he meets one summer evening. The story explores the theme of unrequited love and the human longing for connection and companionship. To read amazing stories readers should go through this interesting book. The book showcases the breadth and depth of Dostoevsky's writing, from tales of love and longing to darker explorations of the human psyche. The collection is a must-read for fans of classic literature and those interested in exploring the complexities of the human condition.

Read more less

Book Synopsis“These are the voices of Crime and Punishment in all their original, dazzling variety: pensive, urgent, defiant, and triumphant. This new translation by Michael Katz revives the intensity Dostoevsky’s first readers experienced.” —Susan McReynolds, Northwestern University

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe narrator and protagonist of Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent (first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a na•ve 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 armed with a mysterious document that he believes gives him power over others. This new English version by the most acclaimed of Dostoevsky’s translators is a masterpiece of pathos and high comedy.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories brings together five of Dostoevsky’s short masterpieces. Filled with many of the themes and concerns central to his great novels, these short works display the full range of Dostoevsky’s genius. The centerpiece of this collection, the short novel The Eternal Husband, describes the almost surreal meeting of a cuckolded widower and his dead wife’s lover. Dostoevsky’s dark brilliance and satiric vision infuse the other four tales with all-too-human characters. The Eternal Husband and Other Stories is sterling Dostoevsky—a collection of emotional power and uncompromising insight into the human condition.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisDostoevsky''s disturbing and groundbreaking novella appears in this new annotated edition with an Introduction by Charles Guignon and Kevin Aho. An analogue of Guignon''s widely praised Introduction to his 1993 edition of The Grand Inquisitor, the editors'' Introduction places the underground man in the context of European modernity, analyzes his inner dynamics in the light of the history of Russian cultural and intellectual life, and suggests compelling reasons for our own strange affinity for this nameless man who boldly declares, I was rude and took pleasure in being so.Trade ReviewA timely re-issue of the Notes with an Introduction that is a lively and informative invitation to engage with Dostoevsky's text.--Raymond Boisvert, Department of Philosophy, Siena College

Read more less

Book SynopsisDostoevsky's short novel is told in the first person by a young man, Alexei, who is addicted to gambling.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadA desperate young man plans the perfect crime—the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law—if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psychological study, a terrifying murder mystery, a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical, religious and social commentary. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in a garret in the gloomy slums of St. Petersburg, carries out his grotesque scheme and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror. Crime and Punishment takes the reader on a journey into the darkest recesses of the criminal and depraved mind, and exposes the soul of a man possessed by both good and evil . . . a man wh

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisInspired by the true story of a political murder that horried Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a 'novel-pamphlet' in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky''s key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes as in his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romantic White Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of pathos and loss, to the famous Notes from the Underground, a story of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromising cynicism, and the first major work of existential literature. Among Dostoevsky''s prototypical characters is Yemelyan in The Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime. Presented in chronological order, in David Magarshack''s celebrated translation, this is the definitive edition of Dostoevsky''s best stories.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1880 Dostoevsky completed The Brothers Karamazov, the literary effort for which he had been preparing all his life. Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, the sensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; and twisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searhes for the truth--about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA beautiful hardcover edition of the first great prison memoir, Fyodor Dostoevsky's fictionalized account of his life-changing penal servitude in Siberia. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, with an introduction by Richard Pevear.   Sentenced to death for advocating socialism in 1849, Dostoevsky served a commuted sentence of four years of hard labor. The account he wrote afterward, Notes from a Dead House (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead), is filled with vivid details of brutal punishments, shocking conditions, and the psychological effects of the loss of freedom and hope, but also of the feuds and betrayals, the moments of comedy, and the acts of kindness he observed. As a nobleman and a political prisoner, Dostoevsky was despised by most of his fellow convicts, and his first-person narrator—a nobleman who has killed his wife—experiences a similar struggle to adapt. He also undergoes a transformation

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less