Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka, Poor People brings to the fore the underclass of St Petersburg, who live at the margins of society in the most appalling conditions and abject poverty. As Devushkin tries to help Varenka improve her plight by selling anything he can, he is reduced to even more desperate circumstances and seeks refuge in alcohol, looking on helplessly as the object of his impossible love is taken away from him. Introducing the first in a long line of underground characters, Poor People,...
Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka, Poor People brings to th...
In these stories, Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality, and also his own ambiguous attitude toward utopianism, themes central to his great novels. In White Nights, the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound loneliness and estrangement from "living life." A Gentle Creature and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man show how withdrawal from reality can end in spiritual desolation as well as moral indifference, and how, in Dostoevsky's view, the tragedy of the alienated individual can only be resolved by the rediscovery of a sense of...
In these stories, Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality, and also his own ambiguous attitude toward utopianism, the...
Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs.
In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave a small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society at the time.
The satirical portraits of the...
Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs.
In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through ...
Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.
Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder.
From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a...
Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.
Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs.
Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life, and these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this out.
The House of the Dead is fiction, but based on his four years in a Siberian prison. An educated upper-class man is condemned to live among criminals and brutal guards, with arbitrary punishments, lousy food, disgusting living conditions, hard toil and many floggings. Somehow he avoids bitterness...
Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs.
Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and v...
Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction and Notes by Agnes Cardinal, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent.
Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum in Switzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the frantic amatory and financial intrigues which centre around a cast of brilliantly realised characters and which ultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a unique combination of the Christian ideal of perfection and Dostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners. His serene selflessness is contrasted with the...
Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction and Notes by Agnes Cardinal, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at th...
Includes pictures and an extensive section on Dostoevsky's life and works After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital from greed, murder, and nihilism to passion, vanity, and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet valued for his openness and understanding, Prince Myshkin finds himself entangled with two women in a position he cannot bring himself to resolve. Dostoevsky, who wrote...
Includes pictures and an extensive section on Dostoevsky's life and works After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that...
The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact revenge on an officer who has shown him disrespect and a dramatic encounter with a prostitute.
Seen by many as the first existentialist novel and showcasing the best of Dostoevsky's dry humour, Notes from Underground was a pivotal moment in the...
The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplati...
Inspired by Dostoevsky s 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. As he succumbs to the temptations of the roulette table, he finds himself engaged in a battle of wills with Polina, the woman he unrequitedly loves.
With an unforgettable cast of fellow gamblers and figures from European high society, this darkly comic novel of greed and...
Inspired by Dostoevsky s own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary ...
Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the maid Sofia Andreyevna as he struggles to find his place in society and become a Rothschild against the background of 1870s Russia, a nation still tethered to its old systems and values but shaken up by the new ideological currents of socialism and nihilism.
Both a Bildungsroman and a novel of...
Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his fin...
