Selected Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky — Poor People, a Novel and Stories of the 1840s (Book One in the Decalogy)

Description

In 1988 RADUGA begun the publication in English translation of selected works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), one of the greatest Russian writers and thinkers whose whole life was dedicated to finding the answers to the most burning questions of human existence which continue to engage the minds of people to this day. RADUGA published Dostoyevsky’s novels and stories fully representative of his genius.

The novel Poor People (1845) was the first book published by the young writer, and it started him on his way to world-wide fame. Dostoyevsky’s concern for the “little man” crushed by need, whose inner world he tried to fathom and understand, is already clearly manifested in all his early short stories included in the first book to come out: “Mister Prokharchin” (1846), “The Landlady” (1847), “A Faint Heart” (1848), “An Honest Thief” (1848), and “White Nights” (1849)-the most poetic story in Russian literature.

“In the works of Mr. Dostoyevsky we find one general feature that is more or less noticeable in everything he wrote: it is the pain he feels for a man who admits that he has not the strength nor even the right to be a real man, complete and independent, an individual. Every man must e a man in his own right, and treat others as such—this is the ideal that has taken shape in the Author’s soul quite apart from any conventional or partial views, and apparently even apart from his own will and consciousness.” —Nikolai Dobrolyubov

“About Dostoyevsky you will not ask: what did he want to say? Open any of his pages and you will clearly see his thoughts and feelings, his intention, his sensations, everything that filled him to overflowing and demanded an outlet.” — Lev Tolstoy

“Once when I came to see Belinsky, I saw him standing at his sitting-room window with a large copy-book in his hands and with a look of excitement on his face. He noticed me and called out: ‘Come quickly, I’ve something to tell you!…’ And when I came in he said: ‘I haven’t been able to tear myself away from this manuscript since yesterday! It’s a novel by a gifted beginner. I do not yet know what this gentleman looks like and how wide is the range of his thinking, but his novel reveals such mysteries of life and Russian characters, no one had even dreamed of before him. Just think, this is the first attempt at a social novel ever made in Russia, and it has been mode much in the manner usual to artists who point without even suspecting just what they are producing.’ ” — Pavel Annenkov, Literary Reminiscences