Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dostoyevsky's own passion for gambling lays in foundation of this novel. He first gambled at the gaming tables at Wiesbaden and later, when his passion for gambling subsided, he played at Baden-Baden, often beginning by winning a small amount of money and losing far more in the end. Using his future work as collateral with his publisher in exchange for cash he was eventually given a final deadline to complete the novel or sell the rights to all his work in the next nine years. So great was the pressure that Dostoyevsky was only able to finish the novel on time using one of the very first stenographers in Russia and his wife-to-be, Anna Grigorievna. 'And I believed in my system ...within a quarter of an hour I won 600 francs. This whetted my appetite. Suddenly I started to lose, couldn't control myself and lost everything. After that I ...took my last money, and went to play ...' - From Dostoyevsky's letters to his brother Mikhail. From The Gambler 'At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me.' - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler 'Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.' - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons--the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha--are all involved at some level. Brilliantly bound up with this psychological drama is Dostoevsky's intense and disturbing exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, freedom of will, the collective nature of guilt, and the disastrous consequences of rationalism. Filled with eloquent voices, this new translation fully realizes the power and dramatic virtuosity of Dostoevsky's most brilliant work. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Idiot (1868), written under the appalling personal circumstances Dostoevsky endured while travelling in Europe, not only reveals the author's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, but also affords his most powerful indictment of a Russia struggling to emulate contemporary Europe while sinking under the weight of Western materialism. It is the portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society in which a "positively good man" clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his moral idealism. Meticulously faithful to the original, this new translation includes explanatory notes and a critical introduction by W. J. Leatherbarrow.

The Insulted and Injured, originally published in 1861, is Fyodor Dostoevsky's first major work of fiction after his Siberian exile and the first of the long novels for which he is famous. Set in nineteenth-century Petersburg, the novel depicts a group of people suffering from the cruel and selfish machinations of a dark and powerful prince. Can pure love overcome such evil?

The Brothers Karamazov, completed in November 1880 just two months before Dostoyevsky's death, displays both his mastery as a storyteller and his significance as a thinker. The Brothers Karamazov is an enjoyable and accessible novel. He discusses its major themes, including atheism and belief, the nature of man, socialism and individualism, and the state of European civilization, focusing particularly on those themes of justice, order and disorder, in whose revolutionary treatment he sees the real significance of this literary landmark.

"A Raw Youth", also published as "The Adolescent", contains many of the themes of "Crime and Punishment".

The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is generally considered the culmination of his life's work. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880. Dostoevsky intended it to be the first part in an epic story titled The Life of a Great Sinner, but he died less than four months after its publication. The book portrays a patricide in which each of the murdered man's sons share a varying degree of complicity. On a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, reason, free will and modern Russia. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all over the world by thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

The Idiot (1868), written under the appalling personal circumstances Dostoevsky endured while travelling in Europe, not only reveals the author's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, but also affords his most powerful indictment of a Russia struggling to emulate contemporary Europe while sinking under the weight of Western materialism. It is the portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society in which a "positively good man" clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his moral idealism. Meticulously faithful to the original, this new translation includes explanatory notes and a critical introduction by W. J. Leatherbarrow.

This is a dual-language book with the Russian text on the left side, and the English text on the right side of each spread. The texts are precisely synchronized. A great book for learning both languages while reading a Russian classic masterpiece.