Showing results by author "Fyodor Dostoyevsky" in All Categories

The narrator and central character of The Adolescent is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy full of ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father’s wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and armed with a mysterious document that he believes gives him power over others.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of an extensive range of Fyodor Dostotevsky's short stories.

Crime and Punishment follows the story of a boy named Raskolnikov who commits a heinous crime because he believes he is in fact extraordinary. Through an internal battle of whether to confess or not, we follow him through his interactions with a drunk, a prostitute, the government, and his family. We see him do incredible acts of kindness, suffer the consequence of his crime on a physical level, and fall in love with an unlikely character, all while trying to reconcile his ability to be extraordinary.

Included: The Apparition Of Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe, Alice Addertongue by Benjamin Franklin, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, Prosper Mérimée by Mateo Falcone, Napoleon And The Spectre by Charlotte Bronte, The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask Of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe, An Honest Thief by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Frog by Edgar Allan Poe, The Knitted Collar by Mary Anne Hoare.

Upon its first publication in 1846, Poor Folk was an immediate critical triumph. Composed entirely of an exchange of letters between a middle-aged copy clerk and a young seamstress who live on opposite sides of a Petersburg tenement courtyard, the novel explores the emotional and psychological effects of a threatening urban environment on the psyches of poor people struggling to survive.

The Possessed, also called Demons, is Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel about life in Russia at the end of the 19th century. In this highly political novel, Dostoevsky portrays the revolutionaries as demons or devils as they plot ruin and eventually turn on each other. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

The Ultimate Essays Collection is a wide-ranging collection of 30 classic essays analysing everything from war to love, journalism to race, travel to nature, and much more, read by an award-winning cast of narrators. Included here are essays by some of the greatest writers of all time, including George Orwell; Thomas Paine; Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Henry David Thoreau; Virigina Woolf; Sigmund Freud; Zorea Neale Huston; Langston Hughes; Jack London, and more.

Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called "Àpropos of the Wet Snow," and ...

Netochka Nezvanova - a 'Nameless Nobody' - tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, a failed musician who believes he is an obscured genius. When she is rescued by a high society family, the abuse against Netochka's psyche continues in a more subtle way, condemning her to remain an outsider - a solitary spectator of a glittering society.

Although titled The Possessed in the initial English translation, Dostoyevsky scholars and later translations favour the titles The Devils or Demons. An extremely political book, Demons is a testimonial of life in Imperial Russia in the late 19th century. As the revolutionary democrats begin to rise in Russia, different ideologies begin to collide. Dostoyevsky casts a critical eye on both the radical idealists, portraying their ideas and ideological foundation as demonic, and the conservative establishment's ineptitude in dealing with those ideas and their social consequences. This form of ...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. The Russian Literary Tradition has justly earned a magnificent reputation. The Russian Empire of the Czars was a huge and disparate patchwork of peoples ruled by an overbearing elite that employed a middle-class bureaucracy to keep the working class firmly underfoot. Within its vaulted ranks are a role call of many of the greatest literary talents of the ages.

Dostoevsky’s narrator is the anonymous voice of the masterful novella. Retired and isolated from society, he is bitter, contemptuous, and contemplative as he presents his anecdotes and philosophical outlooks. Presented as an extract from the narrator’s memoirs, Notes from the Underground is divided into two parts. Opening with a monologue attacking Western philosophy, Dostoevsky follows this theoretical exploration with the anti-hero’s accounts of various destructive and restorative life experiences.

As Dimitry struck him, Grigory screamed and fell back, the blood streaming horribly from his head. Dimitry bent over him, trying to stop the flow with his handkerchief which turned soaking red in an instant. Alexey, Ivan and Dimitry Karamazov were sent away by their father, Fyodor, when they were very young and never knew a father's love. Now what will Dimitry's bitter quarrel with Fyodor lead to?

The Double was published in 1846. A classic of doppelgänger literature, it is conidered one of Dostoyvesky's most significant shorter works. Our protagonist, Golyadkin senior, is persecuted by his double, Golyadkin junior, who resembles him closely in almost every detail. The latter abuses the former with mounting scorn and brutality as the tale proceeds toward its frightening denouement.

In Parts 3-4 of The Idiot, Prince Myshkin returns to St. Petersburg. At a gathering, Ippolit’s confessional letter reveals existential despair. Aglaya Epanchin’s affection complicates Myshkin’s bond with tormented Nastasya Filippovna, pursued obsessively by Rogozhin. A confrontation between Aglaya and Nastasya leads Nastasya to flee with Rogozhin, ending in her murder. Rogozhin’s guilt shatters Myshkin, who descends into madness, reflecting destructive passions and societal decay. Dostoevsky examines the impossibility of pure goodness amidst corruption. Summary by John McCormick

A delightful anthology of great works by some of Europe's greatest short story writers....

From Tolstoy's introspective reflections on the passage of time in Boyhood, Childhood, Youth to Dostoevsky’s exploration of ideological turmoil in Demons, these stories present the raw complexities of personal and societal transformation. Dombey and Son captures Dickens' powerful critique of Victorian society, while Shirley examines the life of a strong, independent woman challenging the conventions of her era.

The short works of Dostoevsky exist in the very large shadow of his astonishing longer novels, but they too are among literature's most revered works and offer keys to understanding the themes in his longer works. Contained in this volume are the short stories "White Nights", "A Disgraceful Affair", and "The Dream of the Ridiculous Man", three of Dostoevsky's most troubling, moving, and poignant works.

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in 12 monthly installments during 1866. Later, it was published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from five years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing.

The 1877 short story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" examines the experiences of a man who decides that life is worthless. Having fallen into nihilism and despair, he is determined to end his life. To that end, he has acquired a pistol. However, an encounter with a distressed young girl interferes with his plans. Back home, he eventually falls asleep, into a long lucid dream.…