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Fyodor Dostoyevsky Message Board 1/1/2012
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Dostoyevski has written!

Author Dostoyevski's Book Reviews

Crime and Punishment
Rodion Raskolnikov is a student living in poverty, struggling to make ends meet. He is obsessed with the idea of great, "extraordinary" people who have the right to overstep human laws in order to make a difference, to help the society. Some are doomed to live miserable lives because they are unable to think and rise above the rules; but others are bigger than that. Determined to find out whether he is one of "the great", Rodion carefully plans and commi...
Demons
Two sons of wealthy aristocrats in 19th-century Russia attempt to foment a leftist revolution, but only succeed in leaving an inept trail of murders, chaos, and recrimination in their wake. Pyotr Verkhovensky is a bitter, ambitious young man. Nominally estranged from his wealthy father, Stepan, an intellectual who fancies himself an enlightened socialist and surrounds himself with like-minded young men for regular political discussions, Pyotr, now in his...
House of the Dead
House of the dead is a excellent novel by Fydor Dostoyevsky. It shows the true power of being alienated and the extent of misfortunes in a siberian prison. In Dostoyevski writings their seems to be a sence of struggle between prisonmates as well as a sence of freedom. It shows that materialism still is the main focus within the prison. Dostoyevsky with a unique style of descriptive writing allows you to feel remorse for the criminals and their situat...
Notes From Underground
Sometimes translated as "Letters From the Underworld," this short, two-part novella sprang the first existential modernist on the world in 1864. Addressing the reader directly, the "Underground Man," a rude and spiteful government official of about 40, has quit his job and ruminates in his poor apartment, remembering past foolishness and humiliations, and going out only to embarrass friends and abuse a prostitute. He talks much sense about the illusions ...

Dostoyevski booklist

The Brothers Karamazov
There is many mental ordeal between Ivan and Dimitry and Dimitry and his father Fyodor. The violence in this novel is taken in by Smerdyakov (perhaps mentally ill). Ivan struggles with guilt, feeling that he caused father's death....
The Idiot
Prince Myshkin is an epileptic returning from a sanitarium. On the train, he meets Rogozhin and they become friends. Myshkin visits his distant relatives, the Epanchins, a fashionable family. General Epanchin gives him a job and he fascinates Madame Epanchin and her daughter, Aglaya, with his innocence and awkwardness. The Prince boards with Ganya, a schemer who wants to marry Aglaya for her money. Myshkin pities Natasya; in their innocence they are t...