Category: Dostoyevsky

Title: The Idiot (Идиот)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Written: 1869
Translator: David McDuff (2004)
Pages: 732 Pages
Structure: 4 “Parts”, each consisting of up to sixteen chapters

Is it possible to live a perfectly good and innocent life in a hostile society?  If you did, what sort of effect would you have on the world? How would it affect you?

In “The Idiot”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky asks these painful questions by placing a simple but good man in the midst of the worldly selfishness of nineteenth century Russia, and then examining the consequences of the ensuing conflict.

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Title: The Brothers Karamazov
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Written: 1880
Translator: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1988)
Pages: 796 Pages
Structure: 12 “Books” and an “Epilogue”, each consisting of up to fourteen chapters

After reading this book I feel like I have experienced a moral and spiritual tempest that has left destruction in its wake, and I am forced to ask how we are supposed to live when horrible things happen, innocent people suffer, and there are no clear resolutions to the conflicts that surround us.

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Title: Crime and Punishment
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Written: 1866
Translator: David Mcduff (1991)
Pages: 671 Pages
Structure: 6 “Parts” and an “Epilogue”, each consisting of up to eight chapters

The Details

I feel dwarfed by this great work.

“Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is full of powerful ideas, and I feel like I have merely scratched the surface, and that I have missed much.

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