The Brothers Karamazov (audio)

After spending four years in a Siberian penal settlement, during which time he underwent a religious conversion, Dostoevsky developed a keen ability for deep character analysis. In The Brothers Karamazov, he explores human nature at its most loathsome and cruel but never flinches at what he finds. The Brothers Karamazov tells the stirring tale of four brothers: the pleasure-seeking, impatient Dmitri; the brilliant and morose Ivan; the gentle, loving, and honest Alyosha; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov: shy, silent, and cruel. The four unite in the murder of one of literature’s most despicable characters—their father. While on the surface a story about patricide, this novel is, on a deeper level, a spiritual tale of the struggle between faith, doubt, reason, and free will. This passionate novel of ethics and morality, religion and philosophy, was Dostoevsky’s final and best work. “This novel will shatter those who are ready for it, ready for Dostoevsky’s courage to plunge into the abyss of human cruelty, and his wisdom at locating what grace there is. This is a novel of ultimate destruction and grace. It has in it the whole lived world, also heaven, also hell.” “[Dostoevsky is] at once the most literary and compulsively readable of novelists we continue to regard as great … The Brothers Karamazov stands as the culmination of his art—his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book.” “A dramatic and psychological representation of the moral consequences involved in the acceptance of rejection of the existence of God.” “The Brother Karamazov … is the strongest [novel] Dostoevsky composed, and is where his genius should be sought … he seems to me to have a deeper relationship with Shakespeare than criticism so far has revealed.” “The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written.” “Heartily recommended to any reader who wishes to come as close to Dostoevsky’s Russian as it is possible.”