„fyodor dostoevsky”

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. Moc...

First 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 ...

The civil servant Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna are spectators of an exhibition ? in a shopping arcade ? of a crocodile owned by a German, when Ivan is suddenly swallowed alive by the animal. Unsuccessful in his attempts to be freed from his prison, due to the German?s concern for his crocodile and excessive d...

Michael Wood's selection of Dostoevsky's shorter works is drawn from the timeless translations of Constance Garnett whose work, he says in his preface, gives readers the best of several worlds.

The House of the Dead recounts the story of Alexander Goryanchikov, a gentleman who is sent to a prison colony in Siberia for killing his wife. Largely ignored at first by his fellow inmates due to his noble blood, he gradually settles in and becomes an avid observer of the new world around him ? watching his fellow prison...

As ideological ferment grips Russia, a small group of revolutionaries, led by Pyotr Verkhovensky and inspired by Nikolai Stavrogin, plan to spread destruction and anarchy throughout the country. Morally bankrupt, they are prepared to use whatever means necessary to achieve their goal, including murder and incitement to sui...

Dostoevsky?s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an u...

TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY. Consumed by the idea of his own special destiny, immured in poverty and deprivation, Rashkolnikov is drawn to commit a terrible crime. In the aftermath, Rashkolnikov is dogged by madness, guilt and a calculating detective, and a feverish cat-and-mouse game unfolds. The ...

In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see first-hand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting Russia. Over the course of his journey he visited a number of major ci...

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 ? a...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially successful version of himself, who abuses and victimizes the original. As he is increasingly persecuted, Golyadkin finds his social, roman...

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 meditati...

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...