Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction and Notes by Agnes Cardinal, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum in Switzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the frantic amatory and financial intrigues which centre around a cast of brilliantly realised characters and which ultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a unique combination of the Christian ideal of perfection and Dostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners. His serene selflessness is contrasted with the worldly qualities of every other character in the novel. Dostoevsky supplies a harsh indictment of the Russian ruling class of his day who have created a world which cannot accomodate the goodness of this idiot.

Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction by A. D. P. Briggs. As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writhings of this one dysfunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships. At the same time he shows - from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil - that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. The Karamazov Brothers, completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise. It cast a long shadow over D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.

Twenty-two lesser-known short stories from Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), including The Horse-Stealers, Ward No. 6, and the Petchenyeg.

Tolstoy's 1893 book, subtitled "Christianity Not as a Mystical Teaching but as a New Concept of Life," introduced such vital concepts as non-violent resistance to 20th Century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Although Tolstoy is best known as one of the great Russian novelists, his place as a social reformer and peace advocate cannot be underestimated.

Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs. Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life, and these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this out. The House of the Dead is fiction, but based on his four years in a Siberian prison. An educated upper-class man is condemned to live among criminals and brutal guards, with arbitrary punishments, lousy food, disgusting living conditions, hard toil and many floggings. Somehow he avoids bitterness and recrimination; faith in humanity survives. With its breadth of characterisation, acute sense of detail and strong narrative interest, this work can still shock, entertain and inspire. In The Gambler we see the Russian community in a German spa town. Drawn to the casino, Alexey becomes obsessed with roulette. In a gripping story, full of psychological interest, his growing mania eclipses even his interest in Polina, a heroine of demonic and vibrant sexuality. Dostoevsky himself was rescued from a similar gambling obsession by the young stenographer who took down this work at his dictation and married him soon afterwards.

This Ivan Turgenev collection unites three of his finest stories into a single, compelling, and affordable edition. A lauded member of the Russia's literary avant-garde during the mid-19th century, Turgenev's novels and short stories have been celebrated for their poignant, emotionally striking themes and the deft use of plot twists. In Torrents of Spring, we follow Dmitry Sanin, a young landowner who embarks on travel from his homestead in Russia to the German city of Frankfurt. Having already toured Italy and other places in Europe, Dmitry is en route home, and treats Frankfurt as a last stop. First Love - revered as one of Turgenev's best tales - begins at a party in which three middle-aged men are each telling the tale of their first love. Mumu concerns Gerasim, a deaf and mute serf who has moved to Moscow after a life spent working the country fields.

The Gambler is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian General. The novella reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline so he could pay off gambling debts.

Young love is ever thus, is it not? Even when it's the doomed young love of a Russian master like Turgenev.

There is a great doppelganger tradition in literature, but there is nothing is quite like Fyodor Dostoevsky's _The Double_. (Jacketless library hardcover.)

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs. In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave a small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society at the time. The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated - until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since. The key figure in the novel, however, is beyond politics. Nikolay Stavrogin, another product of rationalism run wild, exercises his charisma with ruthless authority and total amorality. His unhappiness is accounted for when he confesses to a ghastly sexual crime - in a chapter long suppressed by the censor. This prophetic account of modern morals and politics, with its fifty-odd characters, amazing events and challenging ideas, is seen by some critics as Dostoevsky's masterpiece.

While his restless wife watches, the chemist snores contentedly, smiling at his dream -- that the whole village has a cough and are buying his curative syrup!

Then she hears outside two shadowed figures, a doctor and an officer, talking between themselves . . . about the chemist with the oversized jaw of an ass, and his ever-so-contrasting, so-fetching wife! Then the doorbell rings. Soon the chemist's wife finds herself hosting a small midnight party, gazing upon their ruddy faces and listening to their chatter -- and soon she, too, grows quite lively. Oh, she feels so gay! The dead weight pressing her down on this heavy summer night lifts completely . . .

Chekhov's unerring insight into the turbulent emotions that stir men and women, in "The Chemist's Wife" and the others to be found within "The Duel and Other Stories," instills his gemlike fiction with a still-undiminished power.

The Possessed (In Russian:, tr. Besy), also translated as The Devils or Demons, is an 1872 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Possessed is an extremely political book, and is a testimonial of life in Imperial Russia in the late 19th century. As the revolutionary democrats begin to rise in Russia, different ideologies begin to collide. Dostoevsky casts a critical eye on both the left-wing idealists, exposing their ideas and ideological foundation as demonic, and the conservative establishment's ineptitude in dealing with those ideas and their social consequences. This form of intellectual conservativism tied to the Slavophil movement of Dostoevsky's day, is seen to have continued on into its modern manifestation in individuals like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Dostoevsky's novels focusing on the idea that utopias and positivist ideas, in being utilitarian, were unrealistic and unobtainable. The book has five primary ideological characters: Verkhovensky, Shatov, Stavrogin, Stepan Trofimovich, and Kirilov. Through their philosophies, Dostoevsky describes the political chaos seen in 19th-Century Russia.

Great Russian author Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was an avid hunter and nature lover and used his own experiences in the woods of his native Russia to pen A HUNTER'S SKETCHES (written in the period of 1852-1874). This work established his reputation as a foremost writer of his time. Do you know, for instance, the delight of setting off before daybreak in spring? You come out on to the steps...In the dark-grey sky stars are twinkling here and there; a damp breeze in faint gusts flies to meet you now and then; there is heard the secret, vague whispering of the night; the trees faintly rustle, wrapt in darkness. And now they put a rug in the cart, and lay a box with the samovar at your feet. -- from The Forest And The Steppe

Included in this volume are "The Lady with the Dog," "A Doctor's Visit," "An Upheaval," "Ionitch," "The Head of the Family," "The Black Monk," "Volodya," "An Anonymous Story," and "The Husband."

Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND is a psychological study of the deepest darkest skeletons in the closet of the human mind. The first novel from Dostoevsky's mature second period works, divided in two parts, presents an unnamed protagonist, a twisted angry student, and his worldview. It is one proud man's cry for help and perverse rejection of the world around him.

"The Schoolmistress and Other Stories" contains twenty-one tales by Russian master of drama and the short story, Anton Chekhov. Among the stories is one of Chekhov's classics, "The Bet," in which a greedy banker makes an ill-considered bet regarding capital punishment with a young and impressionable guest. Fifteen years later -- the surprise ending provides one of Chekhov's most thought-provoking tales. The title story is a careful reminder of the soul-deadening life of a teacher in the Russian countryside -- for in Russia of Chekhov's day, education was less-valued than it is today, and teachers greatly underpaid and undervalued. Chekhov was of a different social background than more aristocratic Russian authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev -- this offered him an insight into character that differed from theirs. A physician as well, Chekhov's observational skills are clear in this, as with all of his collections of short fiction. These stories will remind the reader of other 19th Century masters of short fiction, such as Maupassant. But their nature, and poetic irony, is exclusively that of Anton Chekhov.

Anna Karenina (1877) by Leo Tolstoy is a classic story of love and tragedy against the backdrop of pre-revolutionary Russia. The extravagant and dramatic story of Anna Karenina who risks everything for passion is intertwined with the quiet story of Levin (an autobiographical character) and his own quest for true love and personal fulfillment.

This psychological masterpiece is considered to be one of the greatest novels of world literature.