The Village of Stepanchikovo

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014196538X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
Summoned to the country estate of his wealthy uncle Colonel Yegor Rostanev, the young student Sergey Aleksandrovich finds himself thrown into a startling bedlam. For as he soon sees, his meek and kind-hearted uncle is wholly dominated by a pretentious and despotic pseudo-intellectual named Opiskin, a charlatan who has ingratiated himself with Yegor’s mother and now holds the entire household under his thumb. Watching the absurd theatrics of this domestic tyrant over forty-eight explosive hours, Sergey grows increasingly furious - until at last, he feels compelled to act. A compelling comic exploration of petty tyranny, The Village of Stepanchikovo reveals a delight in life’s wild absurdities that rivals even Gogol’s. It also offers a fascinating insight into the genesis of the characters and situations of many of Dostoyevsky’s great later novels, including The Idiot, Devils and The Brothers Karamazov.

The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141906855
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
In the final years of his life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist, and also produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces. The poignant 'The Lady with the Little Dog' and 'About Love' examine the nature of love outside of marriage - its romantic idealism and the fear of disillusionment. And in stories such as 'Peasants', 'The House with the Mezzanine' and 'My Life' Chekhov paints a vivid picture of the conditions of the poor and of their powerlessness in the face of exploitation and hardship. With the works collected here, Chekhov moved away from the realism of his earlier tales - developing a broader range of characters and subject matter, while forging the spare minimalist style that would inspire such modern short-story writers as Hemingway and Faulkner.

Poor People: New Translation

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Publisher: Alma Classics
ISBN: 1847493122
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka, Poor People brings to the fore the underclass of St Petersburg, who live at the margins of society in the most appalling conditions and abject poverty. As Devushkin tries to help Varenka improve her plight by selling anything he can, he is reduced to even more desperate circumstances and seeks refuge in alcohol, looking on helplessly as the object of his impossible love is taken away from him. Introducing the first in a long line of underground characters, Poor People, Dostoevsky’s first full-length work of fiction, is a poignant, tragi-comic tale which foreshadows the greatness of his later novels.

Humiliated and Insulted

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Publisher: Alma Books
ISBN: 0714545775
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcilA-able relationships. At the centre of the story are a young struggling author, an orphaned teenager and a depraved aristocrat, who not only foreshadows the great figures of evil in Dostoevsky's later fiction, but is a powerful and original presence in his own right.This new translation catches the verve and tumult of the original, which - in concept and execution - affords a refreshingly unfamiliar glimpse of the author.

Adolescent

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Publisher: Alma Books
ISBN: 0714545791
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 673

Book Description
Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady - the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the maid Sofia Andreyevna - as he struggles to find his place in society and "e;become a Rothschild"e; against the background of 1870s Russia, a nation still tethered to its old systems and values but shaken up by the new ideological currents of socialism and nihilism.Both a Bildungsroman and a novel of ideas, dealing with themes such as the relationship between fathers and sons and the role of money in modern society, The Adolescent - here presented in a brand-new translation by Dora O'Brien - shows Dostoevsky at his finest as a social commentator and observer of the workings of a young man's mind.

The Rise of the Russian Novel

Author: Richard Freeborn
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521085885
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
This introduction to the study of the Russian novel demonstrates how the form evolved from imitative beginnings to the point in the 1860s when it reached maturity and established itself as part of the European tradition. Professor Freeborn considers selected novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Extended introductory sections to the studies of Dostoyevsk and Tolstoy deal with their earlier works. A final chapter summarises the principal points of contrast between Crime and Punishment and War and Peace, and argues that in certain specific ways, they represent the peaks in the evolution of the form of the Russian novel. Quotations are translated, but key passages are also given in the original. Professor Freeborn treats the novel as a literary form and avoids the overworked formulae on which much historical writing on Russian literature has been based. He is concerned with the literary development of a great form.

The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 030782408X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
This collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes as in his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romantic White Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of pathos and loss, to the famous Notes from the Underground, a story of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromising cynicism, and the first major work of existential literature. Among Dostoevsky's prototypical characters is Yemelyan in The Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime. Presented in chronological order, in David Magarshack's celebrated translation, this is the definitive edition of Dostoevsky's best stories.

Writings on Literature

Author: N. S. Trubetzkoy
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816617937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Abramson (Hebrew literature, U. of Oxford) presents a detailed critical description and thematic analysis of Amichai's work, with reference to the historical background from which it has emerged. The problems of an emerging national culture are seen subjectively through the eyes of one of its most sensitive and perceptive literary observers. Studies in literary theory and history by the influential Russian linguist (1890-1938), edited, translated, and introduced by Anatoly Liberman. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Talent

Author: Joe E. Barnhart
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761830979
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
This book illuminates the connectedness of Dostoevsky's literary art with his philosophical and psychological brilliance. Two Fyodor Dostoevsky conferences originating at the University of North Texas set the stage for this volume. Scholars contributed original papers focusing on how Dostoevsky's literary art and philosophical insights enrich one another. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote and thought polyphonically. His polyphonic method is both his special literary technique and his distinctive way of probing theological, social, and philosophical depths. As Bakhtin and Terras suggest, all Dostoevsky's major literary inventions--from the underground man to the vitriolic Grushenka--are products of his ability to listen profoundly to his own characters. Like the genius author-redactor of 1 and 2 Samuel, he reports the heights and depths of human emotion and behavior, whether exploring the anatomy of dysfunctional families, making the heart soar with Zosima's vision of forgiveness, or giving Ivan Karamazov full rein to challenge theism. Dostoevsky's characters transform themselves into irregular verbs whose fierce independence emerges only because of their desperate and inescapable interdependence. His major characters are text, subtext, and context for each other. They play inside each other's head and answer in one way or another.

The Idiot: New Translation

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Publisher: Alma Classics
ISBN: 9781847493439
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanitorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorius kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya.