Product Description

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide and family rivalry that embodies the moral and spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime and Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, and profligacy. Significantly, the book was on Tolstoy's bedside table when he died. Readers in every language have since accepted Dostoevsky's own evaluation of this work and have gone further by proclaiming it one of the few great novels of all ages and countries.
    "The Brothers Karamazov stands as the culmination of Dostoevsky's art--his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book," said The Washington Post Book World.
  "Nothing is outside Dostoevsky's province," observed Virginia Woolf. "Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading."






The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22147 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-23
• Released on: 1996-01-23
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 912 pages

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

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

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
The final novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published as Bratya Karamazovy in 1879-80, and generally considered to be his masterpiece. It is the story of Fyodor Karamazov and his sons Alyosha, Dmitry, and Ivan. It is also a story of patricide, into the sordid unfolding of which Dostoyevsky introduces a love-hate struggle with profound psychological and spiritual implications. Throughout the whole novel there persists a search for faith, for God--the central idea of the work. The dramatization of Ivan's repudiation of God is concentrated in the famous "Legend of the Grand Inquisitor." A response to Ivan is contained in the preaching of the monk Zosima that the secret of universal harmony is not achieved by the mind but by the heart.

Customer Reviews

Amazing

"All religions are based upon this desire and I am a believer." He comes as close as any author to expressing truth in fiction.

A review of this edition, not of the novel itself:
Many reviews discuss the novel itself, so I'll just comment on this particular edition: My only complaint with this edition is its tiny margins. This, of course, is not an issue for the outside margins, but because the print is so close to the binding, I had to actually pull the two halves of the book in opposite directions to read the print near the gutter. It sounds like I'm nitpicking, but this book is by no means a quick read. Pulling on a book for a couple of hours every night is more tiring than I would have expected. I read a bit of the new edition -- translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky (Link:)The Brothers Karamazov -- in a bookstore today, and it was so comfortable, that I don't think I fully realized what I had been missing until then.

Other than that, and a few typos here and there, it's not a bad edition if you get a cheap one. I bought mine at a thrift store for 35 cents, so I can't complain. This qualifies as a book worthy of a nice edition, and if I were to read this again, which is quite possible, I would spend the $10-$12 for the Pevear/Volokhonsky.

Caveat Emptor
Careful...I was looking for the award-winning Pevear/Volokohonsky translation for the Kindle. It is NOT among the current translations available for the Kindle (as of 3/12/08). (I downloaded the samples and compared the first few paragraphs to my paperback Pevear/Volkohonsky copy)

If the first paragraph is any indication of quality, pass on the versions $0.99 or less, which start with an awkward run-on sentence bad enough to make me think the translator was not very facile with english.