Kirjahaku

A beautiful hardcover edition of the first great prison memoir, Fyodor Dostoevsky's fictionalized account of his life-changing penal servitude in Siberia. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. With an introduction by Richard Pevear. Sentenced to death for advocating socialism in 1849, Dostoevsky served a commuted sentence of four years of hard labor. The account he wrote afterward (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead) is filled with vivid details of brutal punishments, shocking conditions, and the psychological effects of the loss of freedom and hope, but also of the feuds and betrayals, the moments of comedy, and the acts of kindness he observed. As a nobleman and a political prisoner, Dostoevsky was despised by most of his fellow convicts, and his first-person narrator--a nobleman who has killed his wife--experiences a similar struggle to adapt. He also undergoes a transformation over the course of his ordeal, as he discovers that even among the most debased criminals there are strong and beautiful souls. Notes from a Dead House reveals the prison as a tragedy both for the inmates and for Russia. It endures as a monumental meditation on freedom.

"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man," the irascible voice of a nameless narrator cries out. And so, from underground, emerge the passionate confessions of a suffering man; the brutal self-examination of a tormented soul; the bristling scorn and iconoclasm of alienated individual who has become one of the greatest antiheroes in all literature. "Notes From Underground, published in 1864, marks a tuming point in Dostoevsky's writing: it announces the moral political, and social ideas he will treat on a monumental scale in "Crime And Punishment, "The Idiot, and "The Brothers Karamazov. And it remains to this day one of the most searingly honest and universal testaments to human despair ever penned. "The political cataclysms and cultural revolutions of our century...confirm the status of "Notes from Underground as one of the most sheerly astonishing and subversive creations of European fiction."-from the Introduction by Donald Fanger

In 1880 Dostoevsky completed "The Brothers Karamazov," the literary effort for which he had been preparing all his life. Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, the sensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; and twisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searhes for the truth--about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time.

"My intention is to portray a truly beautiful soul." --Dostoevsky Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life--abject poverty, incessant gambling, the death of his youngest child--Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, The Idiot, after completing Crime and Punishment. In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than with the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing Myshkin's moral feelings, as Dostoevsky searches through the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man." The Idiot is a quintessentially Russian novel, one that penetrates the complex psyche of the Russian people. "They call me a psychologist," wrote Dostoevsky. "That is not true. I'm only a realist in the higher sense; that is, I portray all the depths of the human soul."

This new, revised edition of the award-winning translation of Dostoevsky's classic novel celebrates the author's two hundredth birthdayWinner of the Pen/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the "wicked and sentimental" Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons--the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, its social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture. This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbalinventiveness of Dostoevsky's prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. For this bicentennial edition, Pevear and Volokhonsky have revised and refined their translation and continued their ongoing project of translating the great author's work. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel.

The first real expression of Dostoevsky's genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelg nger-a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him with his friends and colleagues. In the dilemma of this increasingly paranoid hero, Dostoevsky makes vividly concrete the inner disintegration of consciousness that would become a major theme of his work.The Gambler was written twenty years later, under the pressure of crushing debt. It is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky-who once gambled away his young wife's wedding ring-knew intimately from his own experience. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of his character, Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character. The two strikingly original short novels brought together here-in new translations by award-winning translators-were both literary gambles of a sort for Dostoevsky.

In "The Brothers Karamazov, unversally regarded as Dostoevsky's masterpiece, the great Russian author creates psychological portraits with considerable violence and poetry. Among the many memorable episodes is Ivan's recounting of the legend of the Grand Inquisitor--a colloquy that explores in startling depth the question of the existence of God.

Dostoevsky's characters are unbelievably, almost painfully fleshed out, leading the German romantic philosopher Friedrich Netzsche to proclaim: "Dostoevsky [is] the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life." In addition to the tormented killer Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment introduces Porfiry, the brilliant investigator assigned to the murder case, and Sonia, a despoiled but pious woman devoted to Raskolnikov. Through his interactions with these two apparent opposites, Raskolnikov confronts his conscience, and learns that only through suffering can one find true happiness.

&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RThe House of the Dead and Poor Folk&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RFyodor Dostoevsky&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&R&&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R: &&LDIV&&RNew introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics &&L/I&&Rpulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&R &&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&RArrested in 1849 for belonging to a secret group of radical utopians, &&LB&&RFyodor Dostoevsky&&L/B&&R was sentenced to four years in a Siberian labor camp--a terrible mental, spiritual, and physical ordeal that inspired him to write the novel &&LI&&RThe House of the Dead&&L/I&&R.&&LBR&&R&&LBR&&RTold from the point of view of a fictitious narrator--a convict serving a ten-year sentence for murdering his wife--&&LI&&RThe House of the Dead&&L/I&&R describes in vivid detail the horrors that Dostoevsky himself witnessed while in prison: the brutality of guards who relish cruelty for its own sake; the evil of criminals who enjoy murdering children; and the existence of decent souls amid filth and degradation. More than just a work of documentary realism, &&LI&&RThe House of the Dead&&L/I&&R also describes the spiritual death and gradual resurrection from despair experienced by the novel's central character--a reawakening that culminates in his final reconciliation with himself and humanity.&&LBR&&R&&LBR&&RAlso included in this volume is Dostoevsky's first published work, &&LI&&RPoor Folk&&L/I&&R, a novel written in the form of letters that brought Dostoevsky immediate critical and public recognition.&&LBR&&R&&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&R&&LSTRONG&&RJoseph Frank&&L/B&&R&&L/B&&R is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of an acclaimed five-volume study of Dostoevsky's life and work.&&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R

"The Possessed," by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics"" "series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of "Barnes & Noble Classics" All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. "Barnes & Noble Classics "pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Famous for accurately predicting twentieth-century totalitarianism, Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" is an emphatic howl of protest against the fervor of revolution and terrorism that gripped Russia toward the end of the nineteenth century. Based on a true event, in which a young revolutionary was murdered by his comrades, " The Possessed" provoked a storm of controversy for its harsh depiction of a ruthless band of Russian intellectuals, atheists, socialists, anarchists, and other radicals who attempt to incite the population of a small provincial town to revolt against the government. In contrast to Dostoevsky's savage portrait of these radicals and the violent ideas that have possessed them like demons, the author expresses great sympathy for workers and other ordinary people ill-served by those who presume to speak in their name. Often regarded as the greatest political novel ever written, "The Possessed" showcases Dostoevsky's genius for characterization, his amazing insight into the human heart, and his shattering criticism of the desire to sway and control the thought and behavior of others.Elizabeth Dalton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College. She is the author of "Unconscious Structure in The Idiot," a psychoanalytic study of Dostoevsky's novel.

Nineteen-year-old Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of a landowner, has difficulty establishing his personal identity amid the political and social upheavals of nineteenth-century Russia, in a new translation of a novel by the author of Crime and Punishment.