Showing results by author "Fyodor Dostoyevsky" in All Categories

Loosely based on sensational press reports of a Moscow student’s murder by fellow revolutionists, The Possessed depicts the destructive chaos caused by outside agitators who move into a provincial town. The enigmatic Stavrogin dominates the novel. His magnetic personality influences his tutor, the liberal intellectual poseur Stepan Verhovensky, and the teacher’s revolutionary son Pyotr, as well as other radicals.

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a poignant and introspective short story that delves into the complexities of human emotions and the transient nature of romantic connections. Set against the backdrop of St. Petersburg's nocturnal charm, the narrative follows the lonely protagonist through four consecutive white nights, where he encounters a mysterious young woman. As the two form a deep but ephemeral connection, Dostoyevsky explores themes of love, isolation, and the fleeting nature of human connections.

The Brothers Karamazov is a tale of a complicated and broken family headed by a father, Fyodor Karamazov, who becomes entangled with his three sons, whom he neglected, after both mothers died.

Also known as Demons, The Possessed is a powerful socio-political novel about revolutionary ideas and the radicals behind them. It follows the career of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, a political terrorist who leads a group of nihilists on a demonic quest for societal breakdown. They are consumed by their desires and ideals, and have surrendered themselves fully to the darkness of their "demons". This possession leads them to engulf a quiet provincial town and subject it to a storm of violence.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former student, lives in a tiny garret on the top floor of a run-down apartment building in St. Petersburg. He is sickly, dressed in rags, short on money, and talks to himself, but he is also handsome, proud, and intelligent. He is contemplating committing an awful crime, but the nature of the crime is not yet clear. Thus begins Crime and Punishment with all the twists and turns and philosophical questions that permeate Dostoyevsky's writing. A world classic! Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

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Oscar Wilde claimed that The Humiliated and Insulted is "not at all inferior to the other great masterpieces," and Friedrich Nietzsche is said to have wept over it. Its construction is that of an intricate detective novel, and the reader is plunged into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, and unrequited love. Found at the center 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.

"The Grand Inquisitor" is a central chapter of Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. The middle brother, Ivan, is having a conversation with his younger brother, Alyosha. Ivan represents the rationalist and nihilistic ideology that permeated Russia in the 19th Century. Alyosha's beliefs counterbalance his brother's. He embodies hope. Ivan tells Alyosha a vision where the grand inquisitor, during the Spanish inquisition, encounters Jesus Christ, who has made a return to Earth.

In "Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, we are not talking about revolutionary personalities, a secret struggle for some ideas or about a curtain of secrets and mysteries. The hero of the "underground", the author of the notes, is a collegiate assessor who retired after receiving a small inheritance. He lives poorly, in a wretched room on the outskirts of Petersburg. And the "underground" is psychological.

Inside this collection of timeless masterpieces, you’ll find three of Dostoyevsky’s most famous works - the gripping, drama-packed The Brothers Karamazov; a powerful account of a naive prince returning to his homeland and finding a world ready to take advantage of him in, The Idiot; and finally, a deep and thought-provoking novel about an impoverished student who, upon pushing himself to murder to get by, struggles with the guilt and ramifications as his actions and beliefs haunt him in the 1866 novel Crime and Punishment.

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. Blackmail, betrayal, and murder follow in the footsteps of his dangerous and all-consuming journey.

The Eternal Husband opens with a man who answers a late-night knock on the door to find himself in a tense and puzzling confrontation with the husband of a former lover—but it isn’t clear if the husband knows about the affair. What follows is one of the most beautiful and piercing considerations ever written about the dualities of love: a dazzling psychological duel between the two men over knowledge they may or may not share, bringing them both to a shattering conclusion.

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives. Indeed their lives, in their own eyes, become almost meaningless, their sense of themselves subsumed under a myriad of problems, whether real or imagined. Seismic events in a life might crush them; the loss of a loved one for instance. Coping is difficult, support hard to find and isolation abounds.

A young student is haunted by the murder he has committed. Overwhelmed afterwards by guilt and terror, he confesses and goes to prison. There he realizes that happiness and redemption can only be achieved through suffering.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821, to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background. In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim. His next was unable to emulate that success but his short stories helped provide an income. ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ is one of his many classic short stories that turn a splinter of the ordinary into the spiralling descent of chaos.

Accused of political subversion as a young man, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife. A haunting and remarkable work filled with wonder and resignation, The House of the Dead ranks among the Russian novelist's greatest masterpieces. Of this powerful autobiographical novel, Tolstoy wrote, "I know no better book in all modern literature.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a titanic among the world's great authors, and The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as his finest novel. A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.

Netochka Nezvanova - a 'Nameless Nobody' - tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, a failed musician who believes he is an obscured genius. When she is rescued by a high society family, the abuse against Netochka's psyche continues in a more subtle way, condemning her to remain an outsider - a solitary spectator of a glittering society.

The Double was published in 1846. A classic of doppelgänger literature, it is conidered one of Dostoyvesky's most significant shorter works. Our protagonist, Golyadkin senior, is persecuted by his double, Golyadkin junior, who resembles him closely in almost every detail. The latter abuses the former with mounting scorn and brutality as the tale proceeds toward its frightening denouement.