anyone reads Dostoevsky?

crime & punishment, the Idiot (my fav), Karamazov brothers, notes from underground, etc? i am crazy about him.

for those who don't know him:
D. is an extremely famous Russian writer who is best know for his in-depth psychological analysis, which is the centre to his books. anyone studying psych. should know him.

for anyone interested in psych. studies, his books are a must read. he has to be the best story-teller in history of mankind. you would think psych. analysis is long and boring, but he does such a natrualy & good blend of twisty plot, charaterization, and psych that you can hardly stop once you started reading. he also has a great knowledge about politics, society during his time, which he also discussed in his books. simply put, the man is a genius

what i like the most about his books is his characters. they are so real, so unique that you can actually see them standing in front of you. but i have to warn you, his books are quite dark.

my fav characters so far: Nastassya Fillipovna, Raskolnikov, Razumikhin, Hippolite

Hello,

I have heard of him - of course - but I have never read his books. The only one I could have named is Crime & Punishment. Does he transpose fictional characters onto real-life political events in Russia? Given Russia's history, I'd say there are countless Russians who are very opinionated.

Kevin.

I've struggled to read Crime and Punishment, but I kept getting confused over the Russian names. They have many different names for the same person, for familiar, and public, ect. I had to make a list of all the characters and all their various names, so I could keep track. This was when I was a kid in school.
There is another Russian novel, I'm not sure by whom, but it is about a man who is imprisoned and chained in a cell by his ankles and tortured for decades, then finally released. No charges are ever lodged against him, he is just a random victim of the Machine. It is the creepiest story I ever read.

puma wrote:I've struggled to read Crime and Punishment, but I kept getting confused over the Russian names. They have many different names for the same person, for familiar, and public, ect. I had to make a list of all the characters and all their various names, so I could keep track...

yeah i know, i had that problem too. their family name consist of two names, & they have a first name, that makes three in total... i kept on flipping back n forth trying to match the person's name =__=

that was the annoy part, but other than that, his books are just amazing

crime & punishment definitely is the most well-known. it mainly surrounds one theme, guilt as redemption, which is very well dissected, but still becomes kinda a narrow topic when stretched over 600pgs. that's why i like the Idiot better, it talks about everything, from highest circle of society to poorest of the commoners to love to the mind of an epileptic...n all analyzed thoroughly in detail. + the original characters & twisty plot that drive everything fwd. pure bliss *__*

i'm always surprised how he was able to tie everything together, n still have such a natural flow...i bow to you, Dostoevsky

Chucky wrote:Does he transpose fictional characters onto real-life political events in Russia? Given Russia's history, I'd say there are countless Russians who are very opinionated.

he does, his stories are set in the real society at the time, with the political movements, government & how people's thoughts are influenced, etc. he is the most Russian of Russian writers, & definitely very opinionated.

I'm reading Crime and Punishment

I once knew a girl that loved Dostoyevski. I was teaching her English, and then we started going out. Well, we weren't really going out anywhere because all she wanted to do was to stay home on the couch read Brothers Karamazov out loud to each other. It was fun for a while, and I found the book very involved and interesting, but she wouldn't allow sex, and I became pretty frustrated. She was a virgin and very paranoid of various things. She would make up elaborate plots of how I'm trying to trick her or something like that. The whole thing became very painful and I had to end it, which was sad both for her and me.