About the book:
Three brothers, a murdered father, and an argument about God's existence that runs underneath the entire plot Dostoevsky's last and most ambitious novel, treating a family drama as cover for working out whether faith is possible after genuine suffering.
Translated by Constance Garnett, whose Dostoevsky translations introduced English readers to Russian literature and remain well regarded today.
1958 Heinemann cloth hardcover, no dust jacket.
Condition:
Good secondhand condition.
Wear to cover as pictured.
Age related tanning to pages.
All pages well bound and intact.
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About the author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 to 1881)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia, into a family of modest nobility. The son of a strict military doctor, he lost his mother to tuberculosis at age fifteen and endured a tense relationship with his father, whose murder by serfs later haunted him. Trained as a military engineer, he resigned to pursue literature, only to be arrested in 1849 for involvement in a liberal intellectual circle. Sentenced to death, he endured a mock execution before years of hard labor in Siberia and military service, experiences that deepened his profound understanding of human suffering, redemption, and the complexities of faith and morality.
Dostoevskys literary breakthrough came with Poor Folk in 1846, but his mature genius emerged after exile with masterpieces that redefined the novel. His intense psychological realism, philosophical depth, and polyphonic stylefeaturing multiple conflicting voicescaptured the turbulence of the human soul. Major achievements include transforming the European novel through works that grapple with existential and spiritual crises, earning him recognition as one of the greatest writers of all time. His influence on modern literature remains unmatched in its emotional and intellectual power.
Deeply influenced by the Bible, Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Pushkin, William Shakespeare, and the German Romantics, Dostoevsky also engaged with Western thinkers like Friedrich Schiller and Honoré de Balzac. In turn, he profoundly shaped Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, and later authors such as William Faulkner, Hermann Hesse, and Gabriel García Márquez. Adjacent figures include fellow Russian giants Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and Anton Chekhov, as well as existentialist and modernist writers who echoed his exploration of the tormented psyche.
Recurring themes in Dostoevskys work include the nature of evil and redemption, free will versus determinism, faith and doubt, poverty, guilt, and the search for God in a chaotic world. Major works include Notes from Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Brothers Karamazov (1880), and the semi-autobiographical House of the Dead (1862).
In later life, Dostoevsky struggled with epilepsy, gambling addiction, and financial woes while raising a family and editing journals. He died on February 9, 1881, in Saint Petersburg from a pulmonary hemorrhage. His legacy as a towering moral visionary endures, and his unique contribution lies in illuminating the darkest corners of the human soul with unmatched compassion, revealing the redemptive power of suffering and love.
