The shorter works of one of the world's greatest writers, including The Gambler and Notes from Underground
The 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 addiction, which he eventually overcame. Many have argued that Notes from Underground contains several keys to understanding the themes of the longer novels, such as Crime and Punishment and The Idiot.
Great Short Works of...
The shorter works of one of the world's greatest writers, including The Gambler and Notes from Underground
Summoned to the country estate of his wealthy uncle Colonel Yegor Rostanev, the young student Sergey Aleksandrovich finds himself thrown into a startling bedlam. For as he soon sees, his meek and kind-hearted uncle is wholly dominated by a pretentious and despotic pseudo-intellectual named Opiskin, a charlatan who has ingratiated himself with Yegor's mother and now holds the entire household under his thumb. Watching the absurd theatrics of this domestic tyrant over forty-eight explosive hours, Sergey grows increasingly furious - until at last, he feels compelled to act. A compelling comic...
Summoned to the country estate of his wealthy uncle Colonel Yegor Rostanev, the young student Sergey Aleksandrovich finds himself thrown into a startl...
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-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 a novel that is rivaled only by "The Brothers Karamazov" as...
Set in mid 19th-century Russia, "Demons "examines the effect of a charismatic but unscrupulous self-styled revolutionary leader on a group of credulou...
A collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating Fyodor Dostoyevsky's thoughts on political philosophy, religion and above all, humanity. From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is destroying a human life, to the anxious antihero of Notes From Underground--a man who both craves and despises affection--this volume and its often-tormented characters showcase Dostoyevsky's evolving outlook on man's fate. The compelling works presented here were written at distinct periods in the author's life, at decisive...
A collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating Fyodor Dostoyevsky's thoughts on political philosophy, r...
Dostoyevsky's epic masterpiece, unabridged, with an afterword by Robin Feuer Miller
One of the world's greatest novels, Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder and its consequences--an unparalleled tale of suspense set in the midst of nineteenth-century Russia's troubled transition to the modern age. In the slums of czarist St. Petersburg lives young Raskolnikov, a sensitive, intellectual student. The poverty he has always known drives him to believe that he is exempt from moral law. But when he puts this belief to the test, he suffers unbearably. Crime and...
Dostoyevsky's epic masterpiece, unabridged, with an afterword by Robin Feuer Miller
One of the world's greatest novels, Crime and Pun...
The final masterpiece from the celebrated author of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot... This extraordinary novel, Dostoyevsky's last and greatest work, tells the dramatic story of four brothers--Dmitri, pleasure-seeking, impatient, unruly . . . Ivan, brilliant and morose . . . Alyosha, gentle, loving, honest . . . and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, sly, silent, cruel. Driven by intense passion, they become involved in the brutal murder of their own father, one of the most loathsome characters in all literature. Featuring the famous chapter, "The Grand Inquisitor,"...
The final masterpiece from the celebrated author of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot... This extraordinary novel, Dostoyevs...
In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels -- Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes -- moral, religious, political and social -- that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the...
In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels -- Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and T...
A compulsive gambler himself at a certain period of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote this novel with real authority. Set in the appropriately named Roulettenburg, a German spa with a casino and an international clientele, it concerns the gambling episodes, tangled love affairs, and complicated lives of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young gambler; Polina Alexandrovna, the woman he loves; a pair of French adventurers, and other characters. Although not as dark as some of Dostoyevsky's other works, The Gambler nevertheless offers a grim and psychologically probing picture of the fatal attractions...
A compulsive gambler himself at a certain period of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote this novel with real authority. Set in the appropriately named Roul...
Fyodor M. Dostoevsky Fyodor Dostoyevsky Constance Black Garnett
The two years before he wrote Crime and Punishment (1866) had been bad ones for Dostoyevsky. His wife and brother had died; the magazine he and his brother had started, Epoch, collapsed under its load of debt; and he was threatened with debtor's prison. With an advance that he managed to wangle for an unwritten novel, he fled to Wiesbaden, hoping to win enough at the roulette table to get himself out of debt. Instead, he lost all his money; he had to pawn his clothes and beg friends for loans to pay his hotel bill and get back to Russia. One of his begging letters went to a...
The two years before he wrote Crime and Punishment (1866) had been bad ones for Dostoyevsky. His wife and brother had died; the magazine he ...