How four of Europe's most mysterious and fascinating writers shaped the modern mind.

Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka were all outsiders in their societies, unable to fit into the accepted nineteenth-century categories of theology, philosophy, or belles lettres. Instead, they saw themselves both as the end products of a dying civilization and as prophets of the coming chaos of the twentieth century. In this brilliant combination of biography and lucid exposition, their apocalyptic visions of the future are woven together into a provocative portrait of modernity.

"This...

2016 Reprint of 1948 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "The Grand Inquisitor" is part of an extended dialogue within Dostoyevskys novel "The Brothers Karamazov." It is told by Ivan, who questions the possibility of a personal and benevolent God, to his brother Alyosha, a novice monk. "The Grand Inquisitor" is an important part of the novel and one of the best-known passages in modern literature because of its ideas about human nature and freedom, and its fundamental ambiguity. The tale is told by Ivan with brief...