The Karamazov Brothers - The Works of Dostoevsky

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 Dostoyevsky 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 Dostoyevsky’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.

Part of The Works of Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian author whose works deal with human psychology in the often troubled political and social environment that was 19th-century Russia. Many literary critics agree that he is one of the greatest psychologists world literature has ever seen. His major works include: Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; Demons and The Brothers Karamazov.

This collection contains:

• Crime and Punishment;
• Devils;
• House of the Dead & The Gambler;
• Idiot;
• Karamazov Brothers;
• Notes From Underground & Other Stories.