Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
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.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A predecessor to such monumental works as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from the Underground represents a turning point in Fyodor Dostoevsky's writing toward the more political side. In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground. This "Underground Man" is one...
6) The idiot
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two womenthe notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaiaboth involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkins honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
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 One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence.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
Publisher
Interactive Media
Language
Russian
Formats
Description
Is murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose? Meet Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime.
Author
Series
Publisher
Barnes & Noble
Pub. Date
c2003.
Language
English
Description
Often considered a prologue to Dostoevskys brilliant novels, the story "Notes from Underground" introduces one of the great anti-heroes in literature: the underground man, who lives on the fringes of society. In an impassioned, manic monologue this characterplagued by shame, guilt, and alienationargues that reason is merely a flimsy construction built upon humanitys essentially irrational core. Internal conflict is...
11) The adolescent
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
The narrator and protagonist of Dostoevskys 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 fathers 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...
Author
Publisher
Knopf
Pub. Date
1994.
Language
English
Description
Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified 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.
Author
Series
Publisher
Vintage
Pub. Date
1993.
Language
English
Description
Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt...
14) A raw youth
Author
Publisher
Heinemann
Pub. Date
1916.
Language
English
Description
"A Raw Youth (The Adolescent)" is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1875 novel which tells the story of the life of a 19-year-old intellectual, Arkady Dolgoruky, who is the illegitimate child of the controversial and womanizing landowner Versilov. The novel focuses primarily on the conflict that arises between Arkady and Versilov, when Arkady rejoins his family in St. Petersburg. Arkady who has been away at boarding school hardly knows his family and when he comes...
15) The possessed
Author
Series
Publisher
Barnes & Noble
Pub. Date
c2005.
Language
English
Description
The Possessed is a novel that dramatizes the cultural and political troubles of Russia in the mid-19th century. It tells the story of a small cell of nihilist terrorists that cause chaos and commit several murders in a provincial Russian town.
Author
Publisher
Modern Library
Pub. Date
[2001]
Language
English
Description
Dostoyevsky is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived. He was also known as a journalist who left a strong impression on people's mind through his writings. His works are often called prophetic because he so accurately predicted how Russia's revolutionaries would behave if they came to power. His profundity in the analysis of pathological states of mind that lead to insanity, murder, and suicide and in the exploration of the...
Author
Series
Publisher
Penguin Books
Pub. Date
1985.
Language
English
Description
Accused of political subversion as a young man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife. As with a number of the author's other works, this profoundly influential novel brilliantly explores his characters' thoughts while probing the depths...