The book contains several topics: the relationship between a man and a woman before marriage, the betrayal of loved ones and their forgiveness, fathers and children. As the life stories of two women are almost the same, as Ivan tried to prevent the same end for Natasha. The breaking lives of good people because of unclean ones on hand.
In the book „The Double” Dostoevsky appears before the reader as a writer with an inimitable sense of humor. The author shows an extraordinary skill in describing comic episodes from life and makes the reader cheerfully laugh at the shortcomings of his characters and the comic nature of the situations. Before the reader St. Petersburg streets of the XIX century come to life, he will get acquainted with the mores of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg.
The protagonist in the novel is a young man of 19, Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the peasant woman Sophia. From childhood, he almost did not see his parents. He was sent to a special institution for rich children, where he was always humiliated and called, a footman. And after graduating from school he receives a letter from his father, in which he calls Arkady to St. Petersburg, where the main events of the novel take place with him....
The Gambler - a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman de Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia ...
The Idiot - a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligen...
The Brothers Karamazov - a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.Set in 19th-century Russia, The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into questions of God, free will, and morality. It is a theological drama dealing with problems of faith, doubt and reason in the context of a modernizing Russia, w...
White Nights - a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.Like many of Dostoyevsky's stories, "White Nights" is told in the first person by a nameless narrator. The narrator is a young man living in Saint Petersburg who suffers from loneliness. He gets to know and falls in love with a young woman, but the love remains unrequited....
Crime and Punishment - a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg, who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the mone...
Notes from Underground - a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature. Notes from Underground is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retire...
Poor Folk - a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, philosopher and short story writer. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.Poor Folk is written in the form of letters between the two main characters, Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova, who are poor third cousins twice removed. The novel showcases the life of poor people, their relationship with rich people, and poverty in general. A deep but odd fr...
Into a compellingly real portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society, Dostoevsky introduces his ideal hero, the saintly Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. Here he sees a picture of Nastasya...
„The Possessed” (also known in English as „The Devils” and „The Demons”) is the greatest novel ever written about the politics of revolution. It is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Published in 1871, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel foretold with uncanny prescience events that would occur almost fifty years later during the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communist tyranny that followed. Inspired by the true story of a political murder th...
„Uncle’s Dream” is a somewhat comic small-town society tale. It satirizes Petersburg society with an emphasis on the evils of gossip. When the aging Russian Prince, Prince K., arrives in the town of Mordasov, Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, a doyenne of local society life, takes him under her protection, with the aim of engineering his marriage with her 23 year old daughter Zina. Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly. In...
Decades later after „Uncle’s Dream”, Dostoevsky wrote „The Permanent Husband”, also known as „The Eternal Husband” (1890). It is one of Dostoevsky’s most perfect works. Classical in form, it presents his most profound exploration of mimetic rivalry and the duality of human consciousness. A love-affair drama that is both tragedy and comedy, that follows complicated relationships, remarriages, and unrequited love. Told from the point of view of a rich and idle man who is conf...
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 working in the household of an imperious Russian general. He begins gambling to win enough money to become a rich man and therefore win the favor of the woman that he loves. ...
With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect and forgiveness, Dostoyevsky’s early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. „Poor Folk” is a short novel focused on a powerful exchange of letters between two bright and introspective individuals living in difficult circumstances in 19th century Saint Petersburg who are in love, yet fight poverty with every inch of their breath. Bound to never be a...
Aleksandr Petrovich lives through a spiritual re-awakening that culminates with his release from the prison camp. The narrator has been sentenced to penalty deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labor for murdering his wife. Published in 1861, „House of the Dead” is a semi-autobiographical work based upon Dostoevsky’s exile to Siberia where he was punished with „hard labor” after he was initially convicted to be punished by death by firing-squad for his involvement i...
„The Brothers Karamazov” is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century of Russia that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. The plot of the novel revolves around the murder of perhaps one of the most despicable characters ever created, Fyodor Karamazov, and the investigation and trial that follows, which swirl around t...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novels and stories delve deep into the mysteries of the mind. Characters grapple with the most basic questions of existence, including what it means to be moral, what it means to love, and what it means to be human. Exploring many of the same themes as in his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romantic „White Nights”, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of pathos and loss, to the famous „Notes from the Underground...
A predecessor to such monumental works such as „Crime and Punishment” and „The Brothers Karamazov”, „Notes From Underground” represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky’s writing towards the more political side. In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground. This story is an exposé of the irrational forces which underlie all human...
Is murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose? Meet Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash. Raskolnikov convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. His struggle with himself and those around him becomes a battle of the individual against society, radicalism against tradition, and ultimately the will of ma...
