Reading Dostoevsky

Admirers have praised Fedor Dostoevsky as the Russian Shakespeare, while his critics have slighted his novels as merely cheap amusements. In this critical introduction to Dostoevsky's fiction, Victor Terras asks readers to draw their own conclusions about the 19th-century Russian writer. Discussing psychological, political, mythical and philosophical approaches, Terras deftly guides readers through the range of diverse and even contradictory interpretations of Dostoevsky's rich novels.