Ocean State Libraries

"Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excrutiating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime and...

First published in 1962, the present volume is a collection of critical essays on selected works by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the famous 19th century Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Critical evaluation of Fyodor Dostoevsky has been marked by sharp and violently bitter extremes. René Wellek has assembled a wide spectrum of these varied critical attitudes toward the works of the great Russian "tragedian...

From the author of Crime and Punishment comes this remarkable collection of short fiction. A selection of ten compelling tales, steeped in Dostoyevsky's characteristic themes of spiritual torment and psychological struggle, evoke life in Czarist Russia. Featured stories include "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," "Bobok," "An Honest Thief," "An Unpleasant Predicament," "Another Man's Wife," "The Peasant Marey," "The Crocodile," "A Faint Heart," "A Christmas...

The Double, written in Dostoevsky's youth, was a sharp turn away from the realism of his first novel, Poor Folk. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelgänger-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...

"From the New York Times bestselling author of THE MOST DANGEROUS BOOK, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. THE SINNER AND THE SAINT is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story-and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his...