Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #334415 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-13
• Released on: 2001-02-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."

Review
"Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

Customer Reviews

great
Fyodor Dostoevesky is a brillant man. I sincerely regret all of the years I put off reading his work merely because I thought it'd be stiff and boring. His short stories are no exception. They are filled with heart, life, sorrow, and capture emotion so well. I highly recommend this book for both old and new readers of Dostoevesky.

As contemporary as ever - highly recommended!
This volume includes such superb works as the haunting 'White Nights" - perhaps more of a novella than a short story - and the disturbing "Notes from the Underground", a landmark of existential thinking and no slight work of genius. Although all of these date from the late 19th century, they appear as contemporary as ever and are a delight to read. Sometimes you have to trod a fair distance to get to the heart of the matter as Dostoevsky is notoriously long-winded. But the journey is certainly worth it.

It is an interesting biographical fact (presented in the introduction) that Dostoevsky himself at one point was condemned to death for political insurrection and even led before a firing squad before finally pardoned. This may shed some light on the source of his fascination with dark psychology and his unusual desire to explore the outer reaches of human experience. To this day his work stands unsurpassed.

Read it and enjoy!

So You Say You Want to Be an Existentialist?
If you say you want to be an existentialist, be sure to read this book first, just as you would read a warning lable on a bottle of medicine; there could be a lot of side effects if taken internally, like an unhappy life. I doubt that Doestoevsky meant it that way, but it came off that way to me.

Dostoevsky was a literary giant of the 19th or any other century. These short stories could be a good primer to his major works such as Crime and Punishment, and the Brothers Karamozov. His writings, some good examples in this book, fairly crackle with intelligence, dialogue, and drama, all of which are generated out of his view of existentialism.

Existentialism is the philosophy of existence, in that each person is free to make up his own mind about what truth is, based on his own personal experiences, and then must be completely responsible for his decisions. Essentially, your reality is what you sense life to be about at any given moment. A person is truly alive when going through extreme situations and suffering; and if all else fails, there is always suicide.

I got this view of existentialism from an encyclopedia; but I could have derived it from these short stories. The existentialist in each of these stories struggles with life and what it means, and seems to almost go out of his way to make an ordinary life precarious and hard. Often he is (at least in these stories) incredibly self-absorbed, and unempathetic, even mean-spirited and predatory to other people, in an effort to somehow experience life to the fullest. He seems to like to psychologically experiment in ways of treating himself and other people for his own benefit, to see what will happen. (An example in one story is the older man that marries a desparate 16 year-old and then stops talking to her just to see how she reacts.) Any happiness he gets from life seems almost accidental. All this makes for great drama, but does it make for a great philosophy? Subjective truth is a very slippery slope, depending on how closely it lines up with objective reality, and how connected the existentialist is with his vision of reality.

That said, believe it or not, I really liked the book and would recommend it to anyone who likes great literature. The philosophy behind the book is another matter all together, and should be taken internally only with caution.