Fiction Genres

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. As he succumbs to the temptations of the roulette table, he finds himself engaged in a battle of wills with Polina, the woman he unrequitedly loves.

With an unforgettable cast of fellow gamblers and figures from European high society, this darkly comic novel of greed and self-destruction reveals Dostoevsky at his satirical and psychological best.

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 “become a Rothschild” 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.

Rodion Raskolnikov is a handsome, yet impoverished student. Morally conflicted, he believes that extraordinary men who contribute much to society by their thinking are above the law, and in order to prove his theory, he decides to murder a grasping old money lender and, through unforeseen circumstances, her sister. Unexpectedly filled with remorse, Raskolnikov is caught in a moral dilemma: while he believes he can get away with the perfect murder, he also finds his conscience challenged by his developing relationship with the beautiful, but deeply religious Sonia. Crime and Punishment was first published in 1866 and has become one of Russian literature's most famous and influential works.

In this dark and compelling short novel, Fyodor Dostoevsky tells the story of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young tutor working in the household of an imperious Russian general. Alexey tries to break through the wall of the established order in Russia, but instead becomes mired in the endless downward spiral of betting and loss. His intense and inescapable addiction is accentuated by his affair with the General’s cruel yet seductively adept niece, Polina. In The Gambler, Dostoevsky reaches the heights of drama with this stunning psychological portrait.

As ideological ferment grips Russia, a small group of revolutionaries, led by Pyotr Verkhovensky and inspired by Nikolai Stavrogin, plan to spread destruction and anarchy throughout the country. Morally bankrupt, they are prepared to use whatever means necessary to achieve their goal, including murder and incitement to suicide. But when they are forced to test the limits of their doctrine and kill one of their own to secure the secrecy of their mission, the ragtag group breaks up in mutual recrimination.
Devils is at once a compelling political statement and a study of atheism and its calamitous effect on a country that is teetering on the edge of an abyss. Seen as Dostoevsky's most powerful indictment of man's propensity to violence, this darkly humorous work, shot through with grotesque comedy, is presented here in Roger Cockrell's masterful new translation.

A classic novel of innocence, guilt, and morality by a Russian master

In one of Dostoevsky's most personal novels, Prince Myshkin, an almost comically innocent Christ figure in a land of sinners, returns to Russia from a sanitorium in Switzerland. His naivete and his faith in beauty contrasts sharply with that of his society, earning him the reputation of "the idiot." Prince Myshkin's morality is tested when he becomes caught in a love triangle and falls into betrayal and tragedy.