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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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The Karamazov Brothers (Oxford World's Classics) Paperback – August 1, 2008

by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Author), Ignat Avsey (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,119 ratings
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Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons--the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha--are all involved at some level. Brilliantly bound up with this psychological drama is Dostoevsky's intense and disturbing exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, freedom of will, the collective nature of guilt, and the disastrous consequences of rationalism. Filled with eloquent voices, this new translation fully realizes the power and dramatic virtuosity of Dostoevsky's most brilliant work.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    1054 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    August 1, 2008
  5. Reading age
    13 years and up
  6. Dimensions
    7.6 x 1.7 x 5 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0199536376
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0199536375
  9. Lexile measure
    970L
  10. See all details
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About the Author

Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest Russian writers, whose works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century fiction.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1054 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199536376
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199536375
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 970L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.56 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.6 x 1.7 x 5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,119 ratings

About the author

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (/ˌdɒstəˈjɛfski, ˌdʌs-/; Russian: Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский; IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ dəstɐˈjɛfskʲɪj]; 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. Many of his works are marked by a preoccupation with Christianity, explored through the prism of the individual confronted with life's hardships and beauty.

He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.

Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837, when he was 15, and around the same time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles.

In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Dostoyevsky influenced a multitude of writers and philosophers, from Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway to Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
1,119 global ratings
missing pages and ink smudges
1 Star
missing pages and ink smudges
The book jumps from page 538 to 603 and only after the return window closed did I notice it. I could not have gone through all thousand pages to see it when I bought the book. Additionally, the ink smudges when you even accidentally put your finger on the page. It is a small and thick book and its hard to keep it open when reading and it becomes even harder when you cannot touch the page or the entire ink smudges all over the page and on your fingers. But the translation is good.
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Top reviews from the United States

Russell Fanelli
5.0 out of 5 stars The greatest psychological novel ever written.
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2011
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The Brothers Karamazov is one of the greatest novels ever written. It is a book not simply to be read, but to be studied for its profound wisdom concerning the human condition. I am reviewing the Ignat Avsey translation which is titled The Karamazov Brothers. Just the fact that Avsey has given the book a new title, which he thinks is in keeping with what Dostoevsky had in mind, suggests to the reader that this translation will break with the more traditional approach taken by the reliable Constance Garnett, whose translation I have read twice.

The Karamazov brothers could not be more unlike. Dmitry, the oldest brother, is a hothead who acts first and then learns to repent later for all his misdeeds; he is filled with anger and resentment and hurts deeply the people he loves most. He is the prodigal son who repents too late to be forgiven by a father he despises.

Ivan, the middle brother, is an intellectual who lives in a world of ideas. He is profoundly affected by the suffering he sees in the world and rejects a God who will permit so much suffering to occur. The servant Smerdyakov listens to Ivan and then waits for a chance to put Ivan's ideas and suggestions into action. Ivan is horrified when Smerdyakov brags to him about the great crime he has committed.

Alexei, the youngest brother, has decided to become a monk. He attempts to correspond to God's grace. He lives a life of self-denial and has the willingness to serve others. Like Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, another great novel by Dostoyevsky, he is an example of a good man who imitates Christ and appears, for that reason, childlike and unable to confront the evil of this world.

Smerdyakov, the servant of old Karamazov, the disreputable father of the brothers, is thought to be an illegitimate son of the old man. He adores Ivan and hangs on his every word. Smerdyakov will take Ivan's philosophy and put it into practice with disastrous consequences.

Three brothers, who could not be more unlike, a disreputable father, whose scandalous behavior is a driving force of the novel, an illegitimate brother, who watches and waits for his time to take decisive action, are the driving forces of perhaps the greatest psychological novel ever written. The patient reader is rewarded with a story that involves us completely in the lives of a cast of characters that represent all aspects of the human condition.

The Avsey translation of this great book will take its place proudly beside the best novels in any person's library and will be taken down from time to time from the shelf, if not to be completely reread, at least to be reminded of the great genius of man.

Added note. Constance Garnett has received much criticism for her translation of The Brothers Karamazov. Perhaps before deciding which translation to buy, the reader should sample a few pages from various translators to determine which seems best. As noted, I am recommending Avsey.
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Peter Arsenio
5.0 out of 5 stars The best translation I've found
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2023
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This is the best translation of "The Karamazov Brothers" I've found. Even its non-orthodox title tells you that you're getting something fresh. Every sentence is alive. Ignat Avsey has a fantastic command of Dostoyevsky's story, and translates it beautifully, rather than trying mimicking the original-- or even previous translators.

This is most clear in the sections about the Starets. His words are some of the most beautiful I've ever read in fiction. The end notes are fairly helpful, although they sometimes reference other works which are part of obscure 30-volumes sets and you'd need to dig them out in order to cross-reference.

I have read C&P as translated by P&V and found it a bit stiff. I never felt the same immediacy or closeness to the characters as I have with this Avsey translation of TKB. I wish he had translated more works in his time, because he was a fantastic translator and writer, but I will be reading his other works.
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R. Schwartz
5.0 out of 5 stars Questions of Psychological and Theological Nature
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2005
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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.
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Miles Davis
5.0 out of 5 stars There is no definitive translation, but this one is close...
Reviewed in Canada on November 14, 2021
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This is my third traversal of the Brothers. My first - almost four decades ago - was David Magarshack's fine translation. It was after that reading that I declared it to be my favourite novel, which it has remained. Next was Pevear and Volokhonsky's so-called "definitive" translation, which struck me as oddly unengaging - linguistically stilted and affectively flat - in contrast to the intense rollercoaster ride of my first reading. And now comes Ignat Avsey's "new" translation, which is surely the best of the bunch. I'm less than 100 pages in, but already it reads very fluidly, naturally, and, most importantly, transparently, as if there's nothing between the narrator and me.

All great fiction engrosses the reader; in hands such as these, Dostoevsky's absorbs and becomes the reader.
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Arun ashok
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful translation!
Reviewed in India on July 12, 2023
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This new translation by Ignat Avsey is truly magical.Even the title itself follows the exact Russian word order and he himself has described about it in the Preface.This book includes all the background information about the author as well as his other works and the details of all the reference materials he used for this work.Once you start reading you will realize the amount of effort he has put into it so as to feel like it's not even translated.It feels so authentic and in some places the language looked so apt and magical.
As you may all know the book concerns with in-depth philosophical problems regarding love,life,suffering and everything that torments earthly man,so take your time and cherish the art of reading.It's definetly worth your time.Peace!!
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georgia
5.0 out of 5 stars Bello
Reviewed in Italy on January 28, 2022
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PeterH
5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Translation of a Very Great Novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2017
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This must be my fourth or fifth time with the Brothers, but this time I am reading it after reading Joseph Frank's brilliant biography of Dostoevsky (the one volume version, not the three), which has given me so much more insight into the thinking behind the plot and the characters and in particular the conflicting world views they hold.

I also spent some time sampling the various translations, having loved Constance Garnett on first reading and also enjoyed David Macduff. The one version I could not get on with is the much-praised Pevear and Volokhonsky, which I found true to the original in terms of vocabulary, as far as I am capable of judging, but lacking, for me, in the poetry and the spirit of the original. This Oxford World's Classic translation by Ignat Avsey I found very enjoyable. It seems to flow well and convey what I take to be a faithful version of the original.

There can't be too many books which impress you more each time you read them. To me, this is the culminating achievement of one of the world's greatest writers and every reading reveals new treasures. Things that struck me this time include just how funny Dostoevsky can be and how cleverly he uses the "unreliable narrator" trope.

If you haven't read this before or if you have read other translations, I think you will find this version fully repays your time.
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Francesca
2.0 out of 5 stars Bantam classics edition is poor quality but readable
Reviewed in Australia on June 12, 2023
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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.
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