fyodor dostoyevsky the brothers karamazov

This sudden and savage murder smoldered within the young Dostoevsky and, when he began to write, the subject of crime, and murder in particular, was present in every new publication Dostoevsky was never free of the horrors of homicide and even at the end of his life, he chose to write of a violent death - the death of a father - as the basis for his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov.Īfter spending two years in the army, Dostoevsky launched his literary career with Poor Folk, a novel that was an immediate and popular success and one highly acclaimed by the critics. And, almost as obsessive was Dostoevsky's interest in death, for while the young student was away at school, his father was killed by the serfs on his estate. He spent most of his time, therefore, dabbling in literary matters and reading the latest authors the penchant for literature was obsessive. His father, an army doctor attached to the staff of a public hospital, was a stern and righteous man while his mother was the opposite - passive, kindly, and generous - and this fact accounts perhaps for Dostoevsky's often filling his novels with characters who seem to possess opposite extremes of character.ĭostoevsky's early education was in an army engineering school, where he was apparently bored with the dull routine and the unimaginative student life. It will well re-pay all thought bestowed upon its explorations of life, death, and the existence of God triple-fold, giving back far more thoughts than you put into it.Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born of lower-middle-class parents in 1821, the second of seven children, and lived until 1881.

As a philosophical novel it is one of the most famous- 'The Grand Inquisitor' is one of the most well-known individual chapters in all of literature.

Blinding in its brilliance and bewildering in its scope, despite its 900+ pages this book is truly worth a second reading, as the first reading is necessary to understand the complex storyline and it is really upon the second go that you can begin to unravel the philosophical threads of which this tangled tale is made. It sweeps you up in a whirlwind of emotionally charged events that can, at times, be overwhelming as it both dregs the depths of human evil and soars to the heights of human charity.

Not for the faint of heart, The Brothers Karamazov is a massive book in volume, content and vocabulary- but it will most certainly reward the reader who puts forth the effort to comprehend this book, and only improves upon subsequent readings.

Fyodor dostoyevsky the brothers karamazov