The Brothers Karamazov (Modern Library) - Hardcover

F.M. Dostoevsky

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679601813 ISBN 13: 9780679601814

Publisher: Random House Inc, 1997

Synopsis

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author's most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it 'the allegory for the world's maturity', but with children to the fore. This new translation does full justice to Dostoevsky's genius, particularly in the use of the spoken word, which ranges over every mode of human expression.

About this title

Review:

[Dostoevsky is] at once the most literary and compulsively readable of novelists we continue to regard as great . . . ;The Brothers Karamazov; stands as the culmination of his art-his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book. [This] scrupulous rendition can only be welcomed. It returns us to a work we thought we knew, subtly altered and so made new again. - Washington Post Book World; A miracle . . . Every page of the new Karamazov is a permanent standard, and an inspiration.;The Times; (London) ; One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevsky's original. -New York Times Book Review. Absolutely faithful . . . Fulfills in remarkable measure most of the criteria for an ideal translation . . . The stylistic accuracy and versatility of registers used . . . bring out the richness and depth of the original in a way similar to a faithful and sensitive restoration of a painting.; -The Independent. It may well be that Dostoevsky's [world], with all its resourceful energies of life and language, is only now-and through the medium of [this] new translation-beginning to come home to the English-speaking reader - New York Review of Books. Heartily recommended to any reader who wishes to come as close to Dostoevsky's Russian as it is possible.; - Joseph Frank, Princeton University With an Introduction by Malcolm V. Jones --Washington Post Book

From the Back Cover:

Completed only two months before his death, "The Brothers Karamazov" is Dostoyevsky's largest, most expanisve, most life-embracing work. Filled with human passions lust, greed, love, jealousy, sorrow and humor the book is also infused with moral issues and the issue of collective guilt. As in many of Dostoyevsky's novels, the plot centers on a murder. Sucked into the crime's vortex are three brothers: Dmitri, a young officer utterly unrestrained in love, hatred, jealousy, and generosity; Ivan, an intellectual capable of delivering, impromptu, the most brilliant, lively, and unforgettable disquisitions about good and evil, God, and the devil; and Alyosha, the youngest brother, preternaturally patient, good, and loving.
Part mystery, part profound philosophical and theological debate, "The Brothers Karamazov "pulls the reader in on many different levels. As the Introduction says, "The characters Dostoyevsky writes about, though they may not appear to be ones who live on our street, or even on any street, seem, in their passions and lack of self-control, the familiar and intimate denizens of our souls." It's no wonder that for many people "The Brothers Karamazov "is one of the greatest novels ever written.
Dover (2005) unabridged publication of the Constance Garnett translation as published by W. Heinemann, London, 1912-1920."

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679601813
• ISBN 13: 9780679601814
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 912