Here we follow the unnamed narrator - one of Dostoevsky’s much-despised radicals, an atheist, rationalist misanthrope - as he comes to the conclusion that there is no point in living. If The Crocodile is Dostoevsky at his most ridiculous, then my second choice, the short story Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877) may, ironically, represent the author at his most sublime. There are many places where you could start exploring this huge, rich body of writing, but here’s what I’d recommend to set you off on your Dostoevsky journey. On the contrary, his writing continued to flourish.
Despite the grief of losing two of their four children, his second marriage to Anna Snitkina, who was less than half his age, ultimately brought order to his life, but without impacting on his creative methods that had seemingly thrived on chaos.
In between, suffering from epilepsy and a gambling addiction, he narrowly avoided losing the rights to all his works after signing an ill-advised contract with an unscrupulous publisher, and spent several years wandering round Europe to escape his creditors. From youthful radicalism that saw him reprieved from a death sentence and serving four years in a Siberian hard labour camp, Dostoevsky eventually became a conservative, establishment figure. But that reputation – and the length of some of his novels – shouldn’t put anyone off Dostoevsky, because even when he’s dealing with exalted suffering, it’s in the context of plots that have more in common with adventure fiction than high-brow literature, and the blackest of comedies is never far away.ĭostoevsky’s own life reads like the plot of one of his novels.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY THE DOUBLE PDF TRIAL
I found re-reading Brothers Karamazov for teaching during the pandemic a real trial - the style felt very oppressive, exacerbating my already gloomy lockdown mood, which is something that hadn’t happened to me before. This can be hard going, even for the most ardent fan. His novels, and the characters that populate them, are preoccupied with what Dostoevsky himself called the “accursed questions”: life and death, faith and doubt, good and evil.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY THE DOUBLE PDF FULL
Mention Dostoevsky to a lot of people and they will immediately picture long, gloomy novels full of the worst types of spiritual torment - as much for the reader, as for his characters.
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