A magnificent one-volume abridgement of one of the greatest literary biographies of our time

Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language-and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2,500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time illuminates the writer's works-from his first novel Poor Folk to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov-by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.

Joseph Frank is professor emeritus of Slavic and comparative literature at Stanford and Princeton. The five volumes of his Dostoevsky biography, published between 1976 and 2002, won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times book prize, two James Russell Lowell Prizes, two Christian Gauss Awards, and other honors. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies awarded Frank its highest honor.

Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language--and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time illuminates the writer's works--from his first novel Poor Folk to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov--by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.

List of I llustrations xi
Preface: Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time xiii
Acknowledgments xix
Transliteration xxi
Abbreviations xxiii
PART I: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849
Chapter 1: Prelude 3
Chapter 2: The Family 5
Chapter 3: The Religious and Cultural Background 23
Chapter 4: The Academy of Military Engineers 38
Chapter 5: The Two Romanticisms 51
Chapter 6: The Gogol Period 61
Chapter 7: Poor Folk 76
Chapter 8: Dostoevsky and the Pléiade 86
Chapter 9: Belinsky and Dostoevsky: I?94
Chapter 10: Feuilletons and Experiments 104
Chapter 11: Belinsky and Dostoevsky: II?119
Chapter 12: The Beketov and Petrashevsky Circles 129
Chapter 13: Dostoevsky and Speshnev 145
PART II: The Y ears of Ordeal, 1850-1859
Chapter 14: The Peter-and-Paul Fortress 163
Chapter 15: Katorga 185
Chapter 16: "Monsters in Their Misery" 196
Chapter 17: Private Dostoevsky 223
Chapter 18: A Russian Heart 243
Chapter 19: The Siberian Novellas 255
Chapter 20: Homecoming 273
PART III: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865
Chapter 21: Into the Fray 281
Chapter 22: An Aesthetics of T ranscendence 298
Chapter 23: The Insulted and Injured 317
Chapter 24: The Era of Proclamations 330
Chapter 25: Portrait of a Nihilist 341
Chapter 26: Time: The Final Months 358
Chapter 27: Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 372
Chapter 28: An Emancipated Woman, A Tormented Lover 384
Chapter 29: The Prison of Utopia 399
Chapter 30: Notes from Underground 413
Chapter 31: The End of Epoch 441
PART IV: The Miraculous Y ears, 1865-1871
Chapter 32: Khlestakov in Wiesbaden 455
Chapter 33: From Novella to Novel 472
Chapter 34: Crime and Punishment 483
Chapter 35: "A Little Diamond" 509
Chapter 36: The Gambler 521
Chapter 37: Escape and Exile 531
Chapter 38: In Search of a Novel 549
Chapter 39: An Inconsolable Father 564
Chapter 40: The Idiot 577
Chapter 41: The Pamphlet and the Poem 590
Chapter 42: Fathers, Sons, and Stavrogin 601
Chapter 43: Exile's Return 616
Chapter 44: History and Myth in Demons 626
Chapter 45: The Book of the Impostors 650
PART V: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881
Chapter 46: The Citizen 669
Chapter 47: Narodnichestvo: Russian Populism 682
Chapter 48: Bad Ems 694
Chapter 49: A Raw Youth 706
Chapter 50: A Public Figure 723
Chapter 51: The Diary of a Writer, 1876-1877 738
Chapter 52: A New Novel 760
Chapter 53: The Great Debate 779
Chapter 54: Rebellion and the Grand Inquisitor 788
Chapter 55: Terror and Martial Law 804
Chapter 56: The Pushkin Festival 813
Chapter 57: Controversies and Conclusions 835
Chapter 58: The Brothers Karamazov: Books 1-4 848
Chapter 59: The Brothers Karamazov: Books 5-6 867
Chapter 60: The Brothers Karamazov: Books 7-12 886
Chapter 61: Death and Transfiguration 912
Editor's Note 933
Index 935
Contents