The Brothers Karamazov

Publisher Marketing: The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. Dostoyevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. The Brothers Karamazov has had a deep influence on many writers and philosophers that followed it. Sigmund Freud called it "the most magnificent novel ever written" and was fascinated with the book for its Oedipal themes. In 1928 Freud published a paper titled "Dostoevsky and Parricide" in which he investigated Dostoyevsky's own neuroses. Freud claimed that Dostoyevsky's epilepsy was not a natural condition but instead a physical manifestation of the author's hidden guilt over his father's death. According to Freud, Dostoyevsky (and all other sons) wished for the death of his father because of latent desire for his mother; and as evidence Freud cites the fact that Dostoyevsky's epileptic fits did not begin until he turned 18, the year his father died. The themes of patricide and guilt, especially in the form of moral guilt illustrated by Ivan Karamazov, would then obviously follow for Freud as literary evidence of this theory. However, scholars have since discredited Freud's connection because of evidence showing that Dostoyevsky's children inherited his epileptic condition, making the cause biological, rather than psychological. Review Citations: Ingram Advance 07/01/2005 pg. 72 (EAN 9780486437910, Paperback) Publishers Weekly 09/30/2013 (EAN 9781843796824, Compact Disc) Library Journal 06/15/2014 pg. 52 (EAN 9781843796824, Compact Disc) Contributor Bio:  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer and essayist whose literary works explored human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual context of nineteenth-century Russia. A student of the the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute, Dostoyevsky initially worked as an engineer, but began translating books to earn extra money. The publication of his first novel, Poor Folk, allowed him to join St. Petersburg's literary circles. A prolific writer, Dostoyevsky is best known for work from the latter part of his career, including the classic novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevsky's influence extends to authors as diverse as Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among many others. He died in 1881.