Suicide As a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia

Irina Paperno is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of Tartu University in the former Soviet Union, she holds advanced degrees in Slavic languages and literatures and in psychology from Stanford University. She is the author of Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior.

A comprehensive study.(Choice) A pathbreaking book.... Paperno's research is impeccable, and the information amassed is invaluable.(The Russian Review) An exciting book. In it Paperno discusses ideas about the meaning of suicide from classical times to the late nineteenth century, when Russia was said to have experienced 'a epidemic of suicides.- A. S. Byatt (The Threepenny Review) As a contribution to Doestoevskii studies, this book will be of primary importance.... Irina Paperno has written fruitful book.(The Slavonic Review) As Irina Paperno demonstrates in this fascinating look at Russian fiction, newspaper articles, suicide notes, and medical reports, the act of suicide in 19th century Russia became the source of discussions on immortality, religion, free will, and the relationship between the individual and society, among other topics.... Paperno concludes that suicide became a cultural artifact in 19th-century Russian and thus served as a symbol of the age.(Virginia Quarterly Review) This book will make an important contribution to nineteenth-century Russian studies. It is not for literary scholars alone; by examining suicide as a cultural institution, Paperno brings together the history of medicine, law, literature, and philosophy in a meaningful way.(Slavic Review)