Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky' s masterful translation of The Idiot is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.
After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and "be among people." Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant' s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this "positively beautiful man" on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.
Enjoy a timeless collection of classic Christmas tales, all available in one audiobook! Classic Christmas Tales by Famous Authors, Volume 1 includes:
'The Royal Truffle Hunt' by Anthony Thorn'A Christmas Dream and How it Came True' by Louisa May Alcott'The Sabots of Little Wolff' by Francois Coppee'A Christmas Guest' by Selma Lagerlof'Christmas Goblins' by Charles Dickens'At Christmas Time' by Anton Chekhov'The Heavenly Christmas Tree' by Fydor Dostoevsky
Christmas may come but once a year but evil, intrigue and malevolence are everyday events.Within this volume Christmas is a time when these dark forces form and coalesce to take life and liberty from people who may and who may not deserve the spin of its wheel.Some are merely evil, others have the beginnings of a conscience that displays itself in a dialogue with the devil, or perhaps only themselves.But, in this volume Christmas takes a ringside seat to the horrors of the human heart.
This is the novel that ensured Fyodor Dostoevsky's place as a giant of Russian literature. First published in 1866, this legendary work continues to enthrall readers around the world and earn Dostoevsky legions of fans with every printing. Timeless, and breathtaking in scope, Crime and Punishment-the story of a young Russian intellectual's decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker and his subsequent intellectual and spiritual crisis-is one of the most famous novels in all of literature. This absorbing book attacks the overly logical nihilistic ideals of reason and science and proves that only through love, self-denial and suffering comes salvation. George Guidall's fluent interpretation of the Russian names enhances this deep, multi-leveled text, and liberates Dostoevsky's eternal prose with dimensions of color and feeling lost to the printed page alone.
Exiled to four years in Siberia, but hailed by the end of his life as a saint, prophet, and genius, Fyodor Dostoevsky holds an exalted place among the best of the great Russian authors. One of Dostoevsky's five major novels, Devils follows the travails of a small provincial town beset by a band of modish radicals - and in so doing presents a devastating depiction of life and politics in late 19th-century Imperial Russia. Both a grotesque comedy and a shocking illustration of clashing ideologies, Dostoevsky's famed novel stands as an undeniable masterpiece.
Dostoevsky studies the psychological impact upon a desperate and impoverished student when he murders a despicable pawnbroker, transgressing moral law to ultimately “benefit humanity.”
“Dostoevsky’s first masterpiece…The narrative’s feverish, compelling tone follows the twists and turns of Raskolnikov’s emotions and elaborates his struggle with his conscience…A moving depiction of the recovery of a man’s diseased spirit.”—Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Dostoevsky studies the psychological impact upon a desperate and impoverished student when he murders a despicable pawnbroker, transgressing moral law to ultimately "benefit humanity."
"My intention is to portray a really beautiful soul.
In 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 a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."
The Idiot is a quintessentially Russian novel, one that penetrates the complex psyche of the Russian people. "They call me a psychologist," wrote Dostoevsky. "That is not true. I'm only a realist in the higher sense; that is, I portray all the depths of the human soul."
"My intention is to portray a really beautiful soul."-Dostoevsky
Often considered a primary forerunner of existentialist philosophy, Notes from the Underground is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, written in the form of a memoir by its central, unnamed character, a former civil servant in St. Petersburg struggling with dark psychological issues.
Loosely based on sensational press reports of a Moscow student's murder by fellow revolutionists, The Possessed depicts the destructive chaos caused by outside agitators who move into a provincial town. The enigmatic Stavrogin dominates the novel. His magnetic personality influences his tutor, the liberal intellectual poseur Stepan Verhovensky, and the teacher's revolutionary son Pyotr, as well as other radicals. Stavrogin is portrayed as a man of strength without direction, capable of goodness and nobility. When Stavrogin loses his faith in God, however, he is seized by brutal desires he does not fully understand.
Widely considered the greatest political novel ever written, The Possessed showcases Dostoevsky's brilliant characterization, amazing insight into the human heart, and crushing criticism of the desire to manipulate the thought and behavior of others.
From renowned translators Richard Pevear and Lindsay Volokhonsky comes a new translation—certain to become the definitive version—of the first great prison memoir, a fictionalized account of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s life-changing penal servitude in Siberia.
Sentenced to death for advocating socialism in 1849, Dostoevsky served a commuted sentence of four years of hard labor. The account he wrote afterward (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead) is filled with vivid details of brutal punishments, shocking conditions, and the psychological effects of the loss of freedom and hope but also of the feuds and betrayals, the moments of comedy, and the acts of kindness he observed.
As a nobleman and a political prisoner, Dostoevsky was despised by most of his fellow convicts, and his first-person narrator—a nobleman who has killed his wife—experiences a similar struggle to adapt. He also undergoes a transformation over the course of his ordeal, as he discovers that even among the most debased criminals there are strong and beautiful souls. Notes from a Dead House reveals the prison as a tragedy both for the inmates and for Russia. It endures as a monumental meditation on freedom.
“This startling book was a sensation in its day and became the source of all of Dostoevsky’s mature fictions…Leo Tolstoy wrote that he did not know ‘a better book in all modern literature.’ One hundred and fifty years later, [Notes from a Dead House] still retains the quality of a literary experiment capable of shocking and moving its readers.”—Robert Bird, author of Fyodor Dostoevsky
After spending four years in a Siberian penal settlement, during which time he underwent a religious conversion, Dostoevsky developed a keen ability for deep character analysis. In The Brothers Karamazov, he explores human nature at its most loathsome and cruel but never flinches at what he finds.The Brothers Karamazov tells the stirring tale of four brothers: the pleasure-seeking, impatient Dmitri; the brilliant and morose Ivan; the gentle, loving, and honest Alyosha; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov: shy, silent, and cruel. The four unite in the murder of one of literature's most despicable characters-their father. This was Dostoevsky's final and best work.
"[Dostoevsky is] at once the most literary and compulsively readable of novelists we continue to regard as great....The Brothers Karamazov stands as the culmination of his art-his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book."-Washington Post Book World
