The Brothers Karamazov

With bible thin pages, ink that will smudge and fade from any sort of contact (and no choice but to smudge the end word because of the lack of margins), and the small size making you fight a little against the book to keep it open (not an edition you want to annotate) you can read from it and absorb the story just fine. It's a shame because I loved the cover of this edition so much. Doesn't help that whoever handled my copy must've played football with it or something because it was scratched and sort of dirty (?) when it arrived. (Again, a shame).For those of you that want to know about the book: it's great! Highly recommend! As with most classics that are 1000 pages or so, sometimes you feel like he's talking too much, but it doesn't drag nearly as much as most other long classics. Really engaging and thought provoking.

There's a printing problem in this book, after page 666 follows page 299 so a few chapters from the beginning have replaced around 6 chapters of the end, so basically the book skips from p. 667 until p. 731

This is my first experience with 19the century Russian literature and I must tell you that it was wonderful. I would remember this book for a long time and I've already ordered "Crime and Punishment". Before the review, let me tell you something about the author - Fyodor Dostoevsky."Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss." - Albert Einstein.There are some authors who you won't forget for what they do to your minds. Dostoevsky is one of them. His writing style is both lucid and intense - his narration one of a kind. His characters are so powerful that you would experience them in real. He has a very smooth style of conveying complex emotions. Ever had emotional experience that was so hard to convey to others, that was clouding your judgement, and your actions could not be explained by not even you. Well, this guy can tell you precisely what was going in your mind.Now, getting into the book. In simple terms this the story of a father and his four sons - Dmitry, Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov the bastard child. I won't go into details describing each of their character, because the way it is described is something that you should experience from the author himself. The book has complex dialogues between atheists, thiests, agnostics about god, morality and justice. Dialogues last 3-4 pages at a stretch. There is even a conversation with the devil.The book can be divided into two parts. The first one is where the characters are build and where Dostoevsky describes the incidents that preludes the second part. There are some intriguing dialogues happening here. Especially the one between Ivan and Alyosha in an inn. This is where Ivan recites this poem 'The Grand Inquisitor'. The chapters surrounding this incident is something that will stay in your mind forever.In the second half, one thing leads to the other which results in a crime and a suspect gets arrested. The plot goes on until we end up in an gripping courtroom drama. Things move a lot faster in the second half and this is part that mystery lovers will like it the most. The whole plot is centered around a crime and the way in which it is revealed and the dialogues involved is so intriguing that you would want to finish the last third of the book in a single sitting.The book also has a sub-plot which is about a little boy and a bunch of his friends. It contains enough emotions that usually makes people cry. Some say it is about Dostoevsky's own child which died quite young.Although, I must warn people who are atheists and agnostics. There are places in the book that you'll hate. But I say bite the bullet and carry forward. It is highly unlikely that you will hate the book.

A beneficial classic in theological and psychological issues. My copy is 1045 pages, so it took me a week and a half to finish while on a vacation. There's no doubt in my opinion in Dostoevsky's remarkable ability to convey each character's psychological makeup, each perceiving their situations slanted from their particular viewpoints, some mildly, others to the extreme, distorting facts with personal objectives.The story is about three brothers, a fourth illegitimate child and brother, the father, two women who play key roles and the murder of the father. The other main characters who play key roles in this story are also described in detail by Dostoeovsky. However, the key elements of this story relate into the psychological and theological issues raised.The story, which is about three brothers and their fathers murder, enters into the psychology of each character relating to Dostoevsky and the question of God. One of the more important chapters is that entitled "The Grand Inquisitor." In this chapter Ivan relates a Christ as teaching a Christianity which equals radical absolute freedom, which differs sharply from the traditional interpretation of Christ. Here Ivan interprets the Grand Inquisitor, the Cardinal, as the representative of the Church hierarchy as the three areas rejected by Christ in the desert offered him after his baptism. And so the Grand Inquisitor is the teacher of miracles, mystery and authority, which are the absolute and necessary tools needed to unify humanity, in that spiritual bread alone will never unify the world, while physical bread will.Now in this, Ivan argues that despite the church leaders defined as power mongers, there are always those few that are ascetic sincere God-fearers who in their journey discover the empty logic of God in this absurd world of suffering, who see the incongruity and futile attempt of the radical freedom Christ offered and rejection of mystery, miracle and human authority, and yet instead of giving up they maintain their authority in the visage to help humanity. For in doing this despite their disbelief, they unify humanity. Although such unification is in ignorance, it is also in happiness and for their best interest, while the minority, the authoritative church leaders, suffer in the true knowledge of the existential angst of reality living in this world and the empty and meaningless promises of a future world after death and immortality of the soul and so called true meanings of justice and good.Dimitry, the oldest brother, is the sensualist like the father, a reveler and passionate man with outbursts of uncontrolled emotions and violent actions and yet contains honor and in someway converts himself into believing in a God of the earth that retains morals of personal and national honor. Ivan is the skeptic who borders from atheism to theism, as he accepts God but not his world, for the suffering of innocent children and other such absurdities. Alyosha, the youngest, is Dostoevsky's hero, also a man who borders in belief and non belief in God, joining a monastery and later leaving and after the the death and decay or corruption of the dead body of his monastery teacher, the elder's Zosima, he begins questioning both God and the world his brother Ivan cannot accept. But Alyosha is the hero in that he is not Ivan, who represents the new man of intellectual existential rationalism and emptiness, as Ivan was said to say that since there is no God, or that the God humanity worships is not real, then everything is permitted, which of course eliminates universal moral codes. But Ivan's conscious battles him in this to the end. His struggle was more than between logic and the thirst for life into a theological struggle with the extreme tension of indifference and a form of atheism or disbelief with the ideas of the divine in the good and justice, which makes this suffering world absurd, so who or what truly is God? Ivan states, "I accept God, but I refuse to accept this world. . . My Euclidean mind cannot accept this world".While Alyosha battle was far less extreme and the hero who attempts to unify people without the traditional belief in God or Christianity, but in a humanistic form which contains the tension of doubt and belief, with love for the earth, as instructed by the elder Zosima, to kiss and shed tears for the earth, to become one with it, perhaps evening sharing in its sins as the Jesus kisses the cardinal in Ivan's tale of the Grand Inquisitor. The character of Alyosha starts out strong in the novel but his character fades in the end in strength and clarity. The novel itself goes into other main characters who play key roles in this story.For Dostoevsky, God is a not the benevolent but a condition of tension, from ecstasy to pain. It seems that in his personal life he was an atheist who after some years of imprisonment and hard labor in Siberia, found a faith in a humanistic version of Christianity which borders on the tensions of the incongruities that permeate the questions of justice and God.

Suprisingly modern read, considering when it was penned. A great discourse on what it is like to have a manic depression. I believe that author himself has it, and that's why everyting spewed by the characters turns into a verbose, semi-coherent loose chain of association--although well-penned by the author. I happen to be a physician, and nowhere have I received a better education on a diseased mental state called "Flight of Ideas" that is demonstrated quite well in Dimitry. Getting to the review stuff, this is a worthwhile read--but I was slightly disappointed at the fact that the author's admittedly selfish desire to "express himself" about everything seemed to compete with the plot. So that's why I tried to punish the author by rating only Four Stars. Having said that, please read the book. Those of us who have grown up in difficult families or have fallen in love with a sexy yet "wrong" woman will find some good stuff to relate to. But read it for the "readibility" aspects. What I mean is, this is a good book to sit on the couch and burn a couple hours. It is exceptional literature. It has some creative suprises (which is why I love reading the classics). There is an element of mystery in the end and this is most likely the best courtroom drama ever written. It is also very strong on dialogues and mini philosophical discourses. The big themes are crime, mental illness, Christianity, fate and "what it means to be a father." I have learned from this book that Russia used to be a much grander place than how we have portrayed it since the Cold War. It was not the Evil Empire. We tend to think that America was the greatest place ever, but within the pages of this book I saw an "America" that was in fact Russia. I'll remember this book for a long time. I'll purchase a leather volume and re-read it. But for the purposes of a good, inexpensive read--this Bantam paperback is a fabulous translation with appropriately readable print font. knew that I would be curled up with it for a couple months, so I didn't want to waste money on the Everyman's Library version, (which has painfully small print.)