Dostoevsky

‘Freeborn is a learned guide and struggles manfully with the impossible task of squeezing Dostoevsky into a pint pot.’
John Carey, The Sunday Times

Fyodor Dostoevsky is known as the author of some of the most important Russian novels of the 19th Century. His greatness is his command of a multitude of human factors, from the most saintly to the most pathological, delineating the deepest emotional states form the perversely criminal and the profoundest sense of evil to a sublime belief in a Christian God.

Throughout, as this biography shows, he never became detached from the realities of the Russian world.

RICHARD FREEBORN has written extensively on Russian history and culture, including A Short History of Modern Russia and The Russian Revolutionary Novel: Turgenev to Pasternak. He is also a translator, novelist, and Emeritus Professor of Russia at the University of London.