Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

„The Brothers Karamazov” is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century of Russia that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. The plot of the novel revolves around the murder of perhaps one of the most despicable characters ever created, Fyodor...

Into a compellingly real portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society, Dostoevsky introduces his ideal hero, the saintly Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds...

With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect and forgiveness, Dostoyevsky’s early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. „Poor Folk” is a short novel focused on a powerful exchange of letters between two bright and introspective individuals living in difficult circumstances in 19th century Saint Petersburg who are in...

Inspired by Dostoevsky’s own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, „The Gambler” is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows the misfortunes of the young tutor Alexei Ivanovich working in the household of an imperious Russian general. He begins gambling to win enough money...