The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky [Paperback]

This collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes as in his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romanticWhite Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of pathos and loss, to the famousNotes from the Underground, a story of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromising cynicism, and the first major work of existential literature. Among Dostoevsky's prototypical characters is Yemelyan inThe Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime. Presented in chronological order, in David Magarshack's celebrated translation, this is the definitive edition of Dostoevsky's best stories."Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."David Magarshack's translations include works by Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, and Pushkin. He has also written biographies of Dostoevsky and Gogol.

1. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that Dostoevsky was the "only psychologist" from whom he ever learned anything. Discuss the psychological dimensions of Dostoevsky's stories: in what ways does he illuminate human personality, passion, motivation, and character, and the role of the irrational in the human psyche?

2. What attitudes toward an analysis of religion-one of Dostoevsky's great themes-can you discern in the short works contained in this volume? Are his ideas about or insights into religion consistent from story to story? Do they vary?

3. "Notes from the Underground," Dostoevsky's most important and influential short novel, was in part inspired by distaste for a novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky entitled What Is to Be Done?, a utopian work that embraces notions of human rationality, scientific determinism, and human progress. In what ways does "Notes from the Underground" respond toló¿