Arcturus The Gambler Достоевский Федор Михайлович

Алексей Иванович - воспитатель русской семьи в немецком курортном городке. Они обанкротились и с нетерпением ожидают смерти своего богатого матриарха, "бабушки". Алексей влюбляется дважды: во-первых, в красивую, но невозможную Полину, которая уговаривает его делать ставки за нее в местном казино; и, во-вторых, в саму игру в рулетку. Оказывается, его пристрастие разделяет бабушка, которая внезапно появляется, очень живая и готовая рискнуть до последней банкноты • Под давлением своего издателя Достоевский - сам пристрастившийся к азартным играм - написал "Игрока" менее чем за месяц • Книга на английском языке • Alexei Ivanovich is tutor to a Russian family in a German spa town. They are bankrupt and eagerly awaiting the death of their wealthy matriarch, 'Grandmother'

Роман "Записки из Мертвого дома" во многом построен на опыте Достоевского, полученном на каторге в Сибири, где он провел четыре года после суда по делу петрашевцев. В романе нашли свое отражение многие мысли и образы, развернутые Достоевским в более поздних произведениях • Роману "Игрок" присущи сильные автобиографические мотивы, ведь азартным игроком был сам Достоевский • История создания этой книги очень интересна: проигравшийся до последнего гроша в Висбадене, отчаянно нуждающийся в деньгах писатель заключил с издательством контракт, согласно которому должен был написать роман… за 26 дней. Эти совершенно неправдоподобные сроки вынудили Достоевского, впервые в жизни, воспользоваться услугами секретаря-стенографистки, которой он надиктовывал текст

Два маленьких шедевра в одном томе. Во-первых, "Двойник", удивительно современный галлюцинаторный кошмар, предвосхищающий Кафку и Сартра. Мелкий чиновник по имени Голядкин узнает о таинственном двойнике - человеке, у которого есть его имя и его лицо и который постепенно и безжалостно начинает вытеснять его из круга друзей и коллег. В дилемме своего все более параноидального героя Достоевский ярко конкретизирует внутреннюю множественность сознания, которая станет главной темой его творчества. Во-вторых, "Игрок" - потрясающий психологический портрет волнующей и разрушительной зависимости молодого человека, навязчивой идеи, которую Достоевский, однажды проигравший обручальное кольцо своей жены, близко знал по собственному опыту. В "Катастрофических любовных похождениях и азартных играх Алексея Ивановича" Достоевский исследует непреодолимое искушение заглянуть в бездну предельного риска, которое, по его мнению, было неотъемлемой частью русского национального характера

This Arcturus Classics edition presents two of Dostoevsky's shorter novels in one volume, Notes from the Underground and The Double • Notes from the Underground is a dystopian tale of the Underground Man, a retired civil servant living in St Petersburg who retreats from society. This work is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel and influenced many classic works including Metamorphosis and Invisible Man • The Double tells the story of Golyadkin who, on a bitter snowy night, encounters a stranger who looks exactly like him. They become friends, but then Golyadkin realises that unlike himself, his double is socially successful - likeable and charming - and thus the relationship starts to deteriorate. Golyadkin is caught up in a psychological battle that can only end in tragedy

"Главная идея... - писал Ф. М. Достоевский о своем романе "Идиот", - изобразить положительно-прекрасного человека. Труднее этого нет ничего на свете…" Не для того ли писатель явил миру "князя-Христа", чтобы мы не забывали: "Страдание есть главнейший и, может быть, единственный закон бытия всего человечества" • Завораживающая история трагических страстей, связавших купца Парфена Рогожина, бывшую содержанку богатого дворянина Настасью Филипповну и "идеального человека" князя Мышкина - беспомощного идиота в мире корысти и зла, гласящая о том, что сострадание, возможно, единственный закон человеческого бытия. Она по-прежнему актуальна и воспринимается ярко и непосредственно, будто была написана вчера • Книга на английском языке • Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot is an immaculate portrait of innocence tainted by the brutal reality of human greed

This study of natural goodness is Dostoevsky’s most touching novel. Prince Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, returns to Russia from a sanatorium in Switzerland in order to collect an inheritance. Before he has even arrived home he becomes involved with Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the fascinating Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. But this is only the main thread of a rich and complex book in which a dazzling host of characters, from generals to street urchins, present the picture of an entire society on the verge of dissolution. A tragicomic masterpiece

'The best thing is to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! So, long live the underground!' • Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of hose own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter irony, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in the The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who looks exactly like him - his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly tragi-comic study of human consciousousness

The civil servant Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna are spectators of an exhibition - in a shopping arcade - of a crocodile owned by a German, when Ivan is suddenly swallowed alive by the animal. Unsuccessful in his attempts to be freed from his prison, due to the German's concern for his crocodile and excessive desire for compensation, the civil servant gradually comes to appreciate his new environment, while his wife begins to enjoy her new-found freedom. Inspired by Gogol's surreal tales, Dostoevsky's hilarious story has been interpreted by some as a vitriolic piece of social criticism and a veiled attack on the revolutionary philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky

Written in the form of a diary, The House of the Dead recounts the story of Alexander Goryanchikov, a gentleman who is condemned to ten years hard labour for killing his wife in a fi t of rage. Initially the target of the other inmates malice, he gradually settles in and becomes an avid observer of the new world around him - watching his fellow prisoners being brutally and cruelly punished by the guards, listening to their past stories of blood and murder and learning that even convicts are capable of acts of pure generosity, as when they sacrifice their own meal to feed a stray dog that wanders around the camp. Based on Dostoevsky's own autobiographical experiences during a four year internment in a prison colony in Siberia, this genre-defying novel is not only an unflinching expose of the conditions of Russian prisoners during the Tsarist period, but also a call to see the human side in criminals and rediscover the values of forgiveness and brotherly love

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett translation, Anna Brailovsky has corrected inaccuracies wrought by Garnett’s drastic anglicization of the novel, restoring as much as possible the syntactical structure of the original

Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation is the only translation that counts. They are the only translators who succeed in making Dostoevsky accessible to a 21st century audience, thanks to their ruthless attention to detail at the expense of alterations which can dilute Dostoevsky's unique and flowing style of writing. The great appeal this book retains even today is in part due to Pevear and Volokhonsky, as well as to Dostoevsky himself. Furthermore, Richard Pevear's substantial introduction is essential reading. It explains the purpose of the book and the historical significance of its ideas. Dostoevsky was writing at a time when Russia had reason to be optimistic, but the warning signs in his fiction perhaps leave us clues as to why Russia still has social problems today - and why, less than 40 years after Dostoevsky's death, Russia embraced Communism and destroyed the society in which Dostoevsky had lived

After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital - from greed, murder and nihilism to passion, vanity and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet valued for his openness and understanding, Prince Myshkin finds himself entangled with two women in a position he cannot bring himself to resolve. Dostoevsky, who wrote that in the character of Prince Myshkin he hoped to portray a wholly virtuous man, shows the workings of the human mind and our relationships with others in all their complex and contradictory nature. Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, from the beautiful, self-destructive Nastasya Filippovna to the dangerously obsessed Rogozhin and the radical student Ippolit, The Idiot is one of Dostoevsky's most personal and intense works of fiction presented here in a new translation