Constance Garnett

Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this...

Based on a true event, in which a young revolutionary was murdered by his comrades, The Possessed provoked a storm of controversy for its harsh depiction of a ruthless band of Russian intellectuals, atheists, socialists, anarchists, and other radicals who attempt to incite the population of a small provincial town to revolt against the government. In contrast to Dostoevsky's savage portrait of these radicals and the violent ideas that have possessed...

Set in nineteenth-century Russia, as the country was emerging from the painful legacy of serfdom, Fathers and Sons' theme is universal: the ideological conflict between generations. At its center are Bazarov a posturing nihilist who rejects all social institutions and Arkady, who has been taken in by Bazarov's revolutionary ideas. When they return from university in St Petersburg to visit their parents, their modern cynicism collides with the liberal-minded...