Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Is murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose? Meet Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash. Raskolnikov convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. His struggle with himself and those around him becomes a battle of the individual against society, radicalism against tradition, and ultimately the will of man against the mysteries of divine providence. So begins one of the greatest novels ever written, a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller, and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption. The best known of Dostoevskys masterpieces, Crime and Punishment can bear any amount of rereading without losing a drop of its power over our imaginations.

Notes from the Underground

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

A predecessor to such monumental works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevskys writing towards 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 story is an exposé of the irrational forces which underlie all human enterprises, however lofty. Yet even in the darkest moments Dostoevsky finds not only grim humor but also the possibility of redemptive love, embodied in suffering individuals and, above all, in the character of Liza. The books extraordinary style brilliantly violating literary conventions in ways never before attempted shocked its first readers and still shocks many readers today.

Poor Folk

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect and forgiveness, Dostoyevskys early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. Poor Folk is a short novel focused on a powerful exchange of letters between two bright and introspective individuals living in difficult circumstances in 19th century Saint Petersburg who are in love, yet fight poverty with every inch of their breath. Bound to never be able to be together because of their conditions, these letter show how much theyd do for one another, even the means arent there. Written during the initial stirrings of the Russian realism movement, Poor Folk is a vivid portrait of societys everyman. A work that is both beautiful and tragic, it unravels an unforgettable tale of the human condition and portrays how poverty instills piety and sanctity in the human soul.

Short Stories

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevskys novels and stories delve deep into the mysteries of the mind. Characters grapple with the most basic questions of existence, including what it means to be moral, what it means to love, and what it means to be human. 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 Dostoevskys prototypical characters is Yemelyan in The Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime. The other stories include: The Christmas Tree and Wedding, The Peasant Marey, A Gentle Creature, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Each story is engaging, relatively short and told in a similar style, usually featuring a male narrator who is troubled, lonely, intelligent and narcissistic.

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century of Russia that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. The plot of the novel revolves around the murder of perhaps one of the most despicable characters ever created, Fyodor Karamazov, and the investigation and trial that follows, which swirl around the role played by his three sons: the impulsive and sensual Dmitri or Mitya, the coldly rational Ivan and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Dostoyevsky uses a drama of parricide of Shakespearean proportions and family rivalry to examine his own contradictions and struggles between faith and reason, love and hate, duty and abandon. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama.

The Double. A Petersburg Poem

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

In the book The Double Dostoevsky appears before the reader as a writer with an inimitable sense of humor. The author shows an extraordinary skill in describing comic episodes from life and makes the reader cheerfully laugh at the shortcomings of his characters and the comic nature of the situations. Before the reader St. Petersburg streets of the XIX century come to life, he will get acquainted with the mores of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg.

The Gambler

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Inspired by Dostoevskys own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, The Gambler is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows the misfortunes of the young tutor Alexei Ivanovich working in the household of an imperious Russian general. He begins gambling to win enough money to become a rich man and therefore win the favor of the woman that he loves. In 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 character. In The Gambler, Dostoevsky reaches the heights of drama with this stunning psychological portrait

The House of the Dead. Or, Prison Life in Siberia

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Aleksandr Petrovich lives through a spiritual re-awakening that culminates with his release from the prison camp. The narrator has been sentenced to penalty deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labor for murdering his wife. Published in 1861, House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical work based upon Dostoevskys exile to Siberia where he was punished with hard labor after he was initially convicted to be punished by death by firing-squad for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle. This experience allowed him to describe with great authenticity the conditions of prison life and the characters of the convicts. Dostoyevsky skillfully portrays the inmates of the prison with sympathy for their plight, and admiration for their energy, ingenuity and talent. The book is a loosely-knit collection of facts, events and philosophical discussion organized by theme rather than as a continuous story.

The Idiot

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Into a compellingly real portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society, Dostoevsky introduces his ideal hero, the saintly Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and nave epileptic Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. Here he sees a picture of Nastasya Fillipovna and falls in love with her. Things get complicated when he proposes her and she rejects him for a man of dubious character called Rogozhin. Myshkin finds love in Aglaya but all hell loose breaks when once again Nastasya decides that she is still in love with the Prince. Utterly infatuated, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, the author portrays the purity of a truly beautiful soul and explores the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world. A tragicomic masterpiece.

The Insulted and the Injured

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

The book contains several topics: the relationship between a man and a woman before marriage, the betrayal of loved ones and their forgiveness, fathers and children. As the life stories of two women are almost the same, as Ivan tried to prevent the same end for Natasha. The breaking lives of good people because of unclean ones on hand.

The Permanent Husband

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Decades later after Uncles Dream, Dostoevsky wrote The Permanent Husband, also known as The Eternal Husband (1890). It is one of Dostoevskys most perfect works. Classical in form, it presents his most profound exploration of mimetic rivalry and the duality of human consciousness. A love-affair drama that is both tragedy and comedy, that follows complicated relationships, remarriages, and unrequited love. Told from the point of view of a rich and idle man who is confronted by a younger rival, the husband of his former, and now deceased, mistress, the story portrays the interchanging hatred and love of the two men. Some critics have ranked this novella among Dostoyevskys best works because of its style and structure. Alfred Bem has called it one of the most complete works by Dostoyevsky in regards to its composition and development.

The Possessed. Or, The Devils

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

The Possessed (also known in English as The Devils and The Demons) is the greatest novel ever written about the politics of revolution. It is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Published in 1871, Fyodor Dostoevskys novel foretold with uncanny prescience events that would occur almost fifty years later during the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communist tyranny that followed. Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, 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. The novels relevance, however, is not limited to Russia and its revolution. With its cast of idealistic murderers and suicides, seductive madmen and glamorous fanatics, The Possessed is a novel for our time as well.

The Raw Youth

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

The protagonist in the novel is a young man of 19, Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the peasant woman Sophia. From childhood, he almost did not see his parents. He was sent to a special institution for rich children, where he was always humiliated and called, a footman. And after graduating from school he receives a letter from his father, in which he calls Arkady to St. Petersburg, where the main events of the novel take place with him.

Uncles Dream

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Uncles Dream is a somewhat comic small-town society tale. It satirizes Petersburg society with an emphasis on the evils of gossip. When the aging Russian Prince, Prince K., arrives in the town of Mordasov, Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, a doyenne of local society life, takes him under her protection, with the aim of engineering his marriage with her 23 year old daughter Zina. Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly. In this novel, vanity and pride are everyday humans obsessions and the word love loses its meaning in the socially-arranged marriages. It is a must read for any fan of not only Dostoyevsky, but of Russian literature and the goings-on of the Russian upper crust.