Lattes & Lit Book Club

Four brothers reunite in their hometown in Russia. The oldest, Dimitri, has just returned from a stint in the military, and he wants to claim an inheritance from his mother that is being held in his father's hands. Dimitri and his father argue and call two other brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, to resolve the fight. The fourth brother, Smerdyakov, is an illegitimate child who suffers from epileptic seizures. He is relegated to servitude in the father's house but enjoys discussing philosophy with Ivan. The murder of their father forces the brothers to question their beliefs about each other, religion, and morality. Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky first published his dynastic novel in serial form from 1879 to 1880. This unabridged version is taken from the 1912 translation by Constance Garnett.

Fyodor Dostoevsky completed his final novel-- The Brothers Karamazov--in 1880. A work of universal appeal and significance, his exploration of good and evil immediately gained an international readership and today "remains harrowingly alive in the face of our present day worries, paradoxes, and joys,+? observes Dostoevsky scholar Robin Feuer Miller. In this engaging and original book, she guides us through the complexities of Dostoevsky's masterpiece, offering keen insights and a celebration of the author's unparalleled powers of imagination.   Miller's critical companion to The Brothers Karamazov explores the novel's structure, themes, characters, and artistic strategies while illuminating its myriad philosophical and narrative riddles. She discusses the historical significance of the book and its initial reception, and in a new preface discusses the latest scholarship on Dostoevsky and the novel that crowned his career.  

This reader's guide has two major goals: to help the reader understand the place of Dostoevsky's novel in Russian and world literature, and to illuminate the writer's compelling and complex artistic vision. The plot of the novel centers on the murder of the patriarch of the Karamazov family and the subsequent attempt to discover which of the brothers bears responsibility for the murder, but Dostoevsky's ultimate interests are far more thought-provoking. Haunted by the question of God's existence, Dostoevsky uses the character of Ivan Karamazov to ask what kind of God would create a world in which innocent children have to suffer, and he hoped that his entire novel would provide the answer. The design of Dostoevsky's work, in which one character poses questions that other characters must try to answer, provides a stimulating basis for reader engagement. Having taught university courses on Dostoevsky's work for over twenty years, Julian W. Connolly draws upon modern and traditional approaches to the novel to produce a reader's guide that stimulate the reader's interest and provides a springboard for further reflection and study.