Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian fiction writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works include Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevsky’s literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th century existentialism, his Notes from Underground, written in the embittered voice of the anonymous “underground man”, was called by Walter Kaufmann the “best overture for existentialism ever written.” Dostoyevsky is widely recognized as one of the greatest and most influential writers of all time.
Crime and Punishment
Raskolnikov, a student in St. Petersburg, murders an old woman, a money-lender, to prove his theory that violence purifies the strong. But no sooner is the deed done than Raskolnikov begins to feel remorse. What follows is one of the greatest psychological studies in world literature.
Notes from the Underground
By the time Dostoevsky was 40, he had spent four years in prison and a further four years in the army as punishment for his part in a political conspiracy. His health was broken. He was gaunt, fervid, anxiety-ridden, and close to bankruptcy. It was in this state he wrote Notes from the Underground, a masterpiece of the psychology of the outsider.
Poor People
Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery.
The Brothers Karamazov
Crazed landowner Fyodor Karamazov’s murder sets the stage for a complex tangle of moral and ethical struggles that involve patricide, betrayal, sacrifice, and glory. A profound psychological study and a penetrating analysis of the search for faith, The Brothers Karamazov explores the most fundamental questions of human nature.
The Gambler
This dark and compelling short novel 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.
The Idiot
a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find “man in man.”
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