Fyodor Dostoevsky – författare

This study of natural goodness is Dostoevsky’s most touching novel. Prince Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, returns to Russia from a sanatorium in Switzerland in order to collect an inheritance. Before he has even arrived home he becomes involved with Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the fascinating Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. But this is only the main thread of a rich and complex book in which a dazzling host of characters, from generals to street urchins, present the picture of an entire society on the verge of dissolution. A tragicomic masterpiece.

Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction by A. D. P. Briggs.As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writhings of this one dysfunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships.At the same time he shows - from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil - that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. The Karamazov Brothers, completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise.It cast a long shadow over D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved.Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disatrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the authors most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy, and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it "the allegory for the world's maturity", but with children to the fore. This new translation does full justice to Doestoevsky's genius, particularly in the use of the spoken word, which ranges over every mode of human expression. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Dostoesky's drama of sin, guilt and redemption transmutes the sordid story of an old woman's murder by a desperate student into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel. Grim in theme and setting, the book nevertheless seduces by its combination of superbly drawn characters, narrative brilliance and manic comedy.

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 remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime.The result is a tragic novel built out of a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world's harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality.

With an Introduction and Notes by David Rampton, Department of English, University of Ottowa. Notes from Underground and Other Stories is a comprehensive collection of Dostoevsky’s short fiction. Many of these stories, like his great novels, reveal his special sympathy for the solitary and dispossessed, explore the same complex psychological issues and subtly combine rich characterization and philosophical meditations on the (often) dark areas of the human psyche, all conveyed in an idiosyncratic blend of deadly seriousness and wild humour. In Notes from Underground, the Underground Man casually dismantles utilitarianism and celebrates in its stead a perverse but vibrant masochism. A Christmas Tree and a Wedding recounts the successful pursuit of a young girl by a lecherous old man. In Bobok, one Ivan Ivanovitch listens in on corpses gossiping in a cemetery and ends up deploring their depravity. In A Gentle Spirit, the narrator describes his dawning recognition that he is responsible for his wife’s suicide. In short, as a commentator on spiritual stagnation, Dostoevsky has no equal.

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart…” 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 remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime. The result is a tragic novel built out of a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world’s harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality.

A murder in a provincial town becomes a trial of faith itself.When Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is killed, suspicion falls on his eldest son Dmitri. Yet beneath the evidence lies a deeper conflict between three brothers whose beliefs could not be more opposed.Ivan wrestles with doubt. Alyosha seeks spiritual truth. Rivalries sharpen, loyalties fracture and hidden resentments surface. As the courtroom drama unfolds, the question of guilt extends beyond fact into conscience.The verdict may be delivered in court, but the true judgement belongs to the soul.FROM THE AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATORS RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

A former official has withdrawn from society. He is sick, spiteful and alone. His confession becomes a classic of psychological and philosophical fiction. FROM THE AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATORS RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY Dostoevsky’s genius is on display in this powerful existential novel. Notes from Underground is the confession of an unnamed former civil servant in mid-nineteenth-century St Petersburg: sick, spiteful, isolated and intensely self-conscious. Speaking from his chosen separation from society, he attacks reason, progress, human perfectibility and himself. The novella moves from bitter philosophical monologue to remembered episodes of humiliation, failed social contact and cruelty. In the Underground Man, Dostoevsky creates one of fiction’s most unsettling voices: an antihero who understands his own degradation but cannot free himself from it. What makes Notes from Underground so disturbing is not simply the narrator’s anger, but his clarity. He sees through reason, society, sentiment and himself, turning this classic Russian novella into one of literature’s sharpest studies of alienation and self-sabotage.

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 worldly qualities of every other character in the novel. Dostoevsky supplies a harsh indictment of the Russian ruling class of his day who have created a world which cannot accomodate the goodness of this idiot.

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes relevant writings by Dostoevsky, among them "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," the author’s account of a formative trip to the West. New to the Second Edition are excerpts from V. F. Odoevksy’s "Russian Nights" and I. S. Turgenev’s "Hamlet of Shchigrovsk District." In "Responses", Michael Katz links this seminal novel to the theme of the underground man in six famous works, two of them new to the Second Edition: an excerpt from M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Swallows, Woody Allen’s Notes from the Overfed, Robert Walser’s The Child, an excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, an excerpt from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, and an excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Erostratus. "Criticism" brings together eleven interpretations by both Russian and Western critics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two of them new to the Second Edition. Included are essays by Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Vasily Rozanov, Lev Shestov, M. M. Bakhtin, Ralph E. Matlaw, Victor Erlich, Robert Louis Jackson, Gary Saul Morson, Richard H. Weisberg, Joseph Frank, and Tzvetan Todorov. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

'The most innovative and challenging writer of fiction in his generation in Russia' Guardian Based on a real-life crime which horrified Russia in 1869, Dostoevsky intended his novel to castigate the fanaticism of his country's new political reformers, particularly those known as Nihilists. Blackly funny, grotesque and shocking, Demons is a disturbing portrait of five young men saturated in ideology and bent on destruction, and a compelling study of terrorism.'Marvellous...a fluid and well-paced translation' Observer

Fyodor Dostoevsky''s ''The Brothers Karamazov'' is a profound exploration of faith, family, and morality. The novel delves into the turbulent relationships between the Karamazov brothers as they navigate issues of paternity, spirituality, and the nature of guilt. Dostoevsky''s writing style is dense and philosophical, with intricate character development and intense psychological insight. Set against the backdrop of 19th-century Russia, the novel reflects the author''s own struggles with faith and existential questions, making it a timeless piece of literature that continues to captivate readers worldwide. Fyodor Dostoevsky, a prominent Russian writer and philosopher, drew upon his personal experiences with poverty, illness, and political exile to create ''The Brothers Karamazov.'' His deep understanding of human nature and profound insights into the complexities of the human soul shine through in this magnum opus, solidifying his reputation as one of the greatest novelists of all time. I highly recommend ''The Brothers Karamazov'' to readers who appreciate thought-provoking literature that delves into the depths of human consciousness and morality. This masterpiece by Dostoevsky is sure to leave a lasting impact and spark introspective reflections on life, faith, and the nature of humanity.

A poverty-stricken student murders a pawnbroker in St Petersburg, then finds guilt harder to escape than the law. TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY A troubled young man commits what he believes is the perfect crime: the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but convinces himself that his motive is not merely personal gain, but the benefit of mankind. So begins one of the defining works of psychological fiction: a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption. As guilt, fear and pride consume him, Raskolnikov is forced to confront the consequences of an idea taken to its most terrible conclusion. Around him move poverty, suspicion, spiritual longing and the possibility of grace. Crime and Punishment is a classic Russian novel about murder, conscience, poverty and moral struggle. For readers of literary crime fiction and philosophical classics, Dostoevsky’s masterpiece remains one of the most searching studies of guilt ever written.

Raskolnikov, an impoverished student, determines to kill a pawnbroker whom he detests. He does, and much plot ensues. The first book that Dostoevsky wrote after his exile in Siberia, and widely considered one of the greatest novels of all time, in all of world literature.

Unique collection of short storiesFeeling alone and abandoned by everyone, a young man and self-confessed dreamer decides to take to the streets of St Petersburg during one of its long summer nights. As he roams around the empty city, he chances on a weeping girl, whom he approaches and rescues from the unwanted attentions of an importunate gentleman. The two agree to meet again the following night on the same spot, and as they start revealing their life story to each other, the young man cannot resist falling in love with his new acquaintance.A quintessential tale of urban solitude and the desperate need for human contact, White Nights, a novella written in 1848, soon after The Double, is accompanied in this volume by the rest of Dostoevsky’s shorter fiction, including famous stories such as ‘Mr Prokharchin’, ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’, ‘A Gentle Creature’ and ‘Bobok’ – all presented in sparkling new translations by Roger Cockrell.List of Stories: The Landlady, Mr Prokharchin, A Novel in Nine Letters, Another Man’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed, A Weak Heart, Polzunkov, An Honest Thief, A Christmas Tree and a Wedding, White Nights, A Little Hero, A Nasty Story, Bobok, The Heavenly Christmas Tree, The Peasant Marei, A Gentle Creature, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

Notes from Underground also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld is an 1864 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter irony, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' and his gradual withdrawal from society. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who looks exactly like him - his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly tragi-comic study of human consciousness.

Into a compellingly real portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society, Dostoevsky introduces his ideal hero, the saintly Prince Myshkin. The tensions subsequently unleashed by the hero's innocence, truthfulness, and humility betray the inadequacy of his moral idealism and disclose the spiritual emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate him. Myshkin's mission ends in idiocy and darkness, but it is the world that is rotten, not he. Written under appalling personal circumstances when Dostoevsky was travelling in Europe, The Idiot not only reveals the author's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, but also affords his most incisive indictment of Russia's struggling to emulate contemporary Europe and sinking under the weight of Western materialism. This new translation by Alan Myers is meticulously faithful to the original and has a critical introduction by W. J. Leatherbarrow. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

“It may seem paradoxical to speak of such insights as liberating, or to find in the Underground Man’s impassioned rejection of rational humanitarianism a call to arms. Yet each age we live through as individuals demands a certain kind of book- just as each era thieves the last with a magpie’s lust for the gewgaws of thought. Oddly enough, now I come to look at Notes again- and examine it in the round- I discover that my revised impression of it as a text at once jejune and cynical, callow as well as wise, is not, perhaps, too far from reality.” -Will Self““(Dostoevsky)... is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch.” -James Joyce Notes from the Underground is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ninth novel, and considered to be one of the first examples of the existential novel. In this radically inventive work, an alienated former minor administrator in nineteenth-century Russia has broken away from society and withdrawn into an underground identity. With its piercing insight into political, social, and moral issues, this classic is one of the most provocative work of literature ever written.In the first half of the novel, the unnamed narrator, a cynical recluse in 1860’s St. Petersburg, attacks the ideologies of inherent laws of self-interest; he is crippled with self-loathing, and bound by his contempt of certain political attitudes of his day. He welcomes any psychic or physical pain in his life as he believe it rails against the complacency of modern society. The second half, entitled “Apropos of the Wet Snow”, the narrator relates his alienated relationships he experiences with others, including old school chums and a prostitute named Liza, who is only demeaned in his misanthropic mind. A singular document of the depravity of human consciousness, this is one of the most powerful pieces of literature ever written.With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Notes from the Underground is both modern and readable.

Only edition in printFirst published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcil­able relationships. At the centre of the story are a young struggling author, an orphaned teenager and a depraved aristocrat, who not only foreshadows the great figures of evil in Dostoevsky’s later fiction, but is a powerful and original presence in his own right.This new translation catches the verve and tumult of the original, which – in concept and execution – affords a refreshingly unfamiliar glimpse of the author.

So essential is Crime and Punishment (1866) to global literature and to our understanding of Russia that it was one of the three books Edward Snowden, while confined to the Moscow airport, was given to help him absorb the culture. In a work that best embodies the existential dilemmas of man’s will to power, an impoverished student, sees himself as extraordinary and therefore free to commit crimes.English translators have struggled with excessive literalism and no translation is felicitous to the literary nuances of the original prose. Now, Michael Katz addresses these challenges with new insights into the linguistic richness, the subtle tones and the cunning humour in this sparkling rendition of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.

Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his sons—the eponymous brothers Karamazov—and lead to his violent murder. In the aftermath of the killing, the brothers contend with dilemmas of honour, faith and reason as the community closes in on the murderer in their midst. Acclaimed translator Michael R. Katz renders this masterpiece’s nuanced and evocative storytelling in a vibrant, signature prose style that captures all the power of Dostoevsky’s original—the clever humour, the rich emotion, the passion and the turmoil—and that will captivate and unsettle a new generation of readers.