The story of Dostoevsky s extraordinary second marriage during which he wrote his greatest novels is a novel in itself . . . It is a plain, straightforward, honest, and moving account of a happy if reckless marriage . . . The brave, simple young adorer has written the only really intimate portrait o[...]

The shorter works of one of the world's greatest writers, including The Gambler and Notes from UndergroundThe short works of Dostoevsky exist in the very large shadow of his astonishing longer novels, but they too are among literature's most revered works. The Gambler chronicles Dostoevsky's own add[...]

"The Brothers Karamazov" is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving Karamazov and his three sons - the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping[...]

'It is best to do nothing The best thing is conscious inertia So long live the underground ' Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's groundbreaking "Notes from Underground" tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter [...]

This Casebook is a collection of interpretations of Crime and Punishment. The selection not only reflects earlier work by major critics in the field, but also more recent studies. At the same time the choice of critical approaches has been made on the basis of covering the novel's various aspects: D[...]

In the stories in this volume Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality and also his own ambiguous attitude to utopianism, themes central to many of his great novels. In White Nights the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound loneliness a[...]

One of the greatest writers of all time, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is best known for such masterpieces as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. His works are widely read and studied today, and he has received much biographical and critical attention. Like many other writers of endurin[...]

Set in mid 19th-century Russia, "Demons "examines the effect of a charismatic but unscrupulous self-styled revolutionary leader on a group of credulous followers.Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of "Demons" as a "novel-pamp[...]

Prince Myshkin, a good yet simple man, is out of place in the corrupt world obsessed by wealth, power, and sexual conquest created by Russia's elite ruling class, as he becomes caught in the middle of a violent love triangle with two women who become rivals for his attention. Reprint. 12,500 first p[...]

New footnotes have been added, based on discoveries by the leading Soviet Dostoevsky scholar, Sergei Belov. "Backgrounds and Sources," highly praised in the Second Edition, remains unaltered. Included are a detailed map of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, selections from Dostoevsky's notebooks and[...]

Most significant of the Russian novelist's early stories (1846) offers a straight-faced treatment of a hallucinatory theme. Golyadkin senior is a powerless target of persecution by Golyadkin junior, his double in almost every respect. Familiar Dostoyevskan themes of helplessness, victimization, scan[...]