Books

Seen by many as the first existentialist novel and showcasing the best of Dostoevsky's dry humour, Notes from Underground was a pivotal moment in the development of modern literature and has inspired countless novelists, thinkers and film-makers

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.

A masterpiece of psychological insight, Dostoevsky's 1866 novel features some of its author's most memorable characters – from the temperamental protagonist Raskolnikov to the amoral sensualist Svidrigailov and the immoral lawyer Luzhin. Presented here in a sparkling new translation by Roger Cockerell, Crime and Punishment is a towering work in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and a landmark of world literature.

Dostoevsky, who wrote that in the character of Prince Myshkin he hoped to portray a “wholly virtuous man”, shows the workings of the human mind and our relationships with others in all their complex and contradictory nature. Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, from the beautiful, self-destructive Nastasya Filippovna to the dangerously obsessed Rogozhin and the radical student Ippolit, The Idiot is one of Dostoevsky's most personal and intense works of fiction

The Double, Dostoevsky's second published work of fiction, which foreshadows in its themes many of his mature novels, is the surreal and hallucinatory tale of an unfortunate anti-hero, at once chilling in its depiction of the dark sides of human nature and exuberantly comical