Author
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky's final novel starts as a family quarrel over money and a woman. It grows into one of the most searching inquiries in Russian literature into faith, guilt and freedom. The cruel, buffoonish landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov has three legitimate sons: passionate Dmitri, intellectual Ivan and gentle, monastery-trained Alyosha. A servant, Smerdyakov, is rumored to be a fourth, illegitimate son. When the father is killed, an investigation and a public trial force each character to face what he believes and what he is capable of. This Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback uses the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation. It is a widely used modern English version for readers who want classic novels to read in a current idiom.