The complete works of Fyodor Dostoevsky in one definitive volume — over 1.5 million words of fiction, available together for the first time in this form.
For over 175 years, Dostoevsky has been the writer to whom the modern world returns when it needs to think honestly about its own darkness. From the epistolary debut that made him famous overnight to the philosophical-religious masterpieces of his final decade, this Erato Press edition gathers the complete fiction of one of the greatest minds in literary history.
The four great novels:
Crime and Punishment (1866) — Raskolnikov, an axe, and the most piercing study of guilt ever written.The Idiot (1869) — Prince Myshkin, the holy fool whose pure goodness destroys everyone around him.Demons (also known as The Possessed, 1872) — political nihilism, terrorism, and the prophetic novel that anticipated the twentieth century’s catastrophes by forty years.The Brothers Karamazov (1880) — Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel. Patricide, faith, the Grand Inquisitor, and the question of whether God’s existence can survive the suffering of children.The shorter masterpieces:
Notes from the Underground — the first modern psychological monologueThe Gambler — the autobiographical fever-dream written in twenty-seven daysPoor Folk — the debut that Belinsky declared the birth of Russian social fictionThe House of the Dead — the memoirs of Siberian prison campWhite Nights and Other Stories — the lyrical novella and accompanying talesThe Permanent Husband — late-period jealousy fableUncle’s Dream — the comic novellaPlus the famous Grand Inquisitor chapter presented as a standalone text, Stavrogin’s Confession (the chapter suppressed from Demons and published only after Dostoevsky’s death), and the Best Russian Short Stories anthology featuring Dostoevsky alongside Chekhov, Turgenev, and Tolstoy.
Why this edition?
The translations gathered in this volume are the finest available in the public domain. Constance Garnett — the first translator to bring Dostoevsky into English at scale — renders Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, and the shorter stories with the fluency that made Tolstoy, Conrad, and Hemingway her devoted readers. C. J. Hogarth carries the comic and satirical texts. Eva Martin’s The Idiot has the directness that novel demands.
This Erato Press edition includes:
The complete fiction in unabridged formAn extensive critical introduction — The Abyss and the Face: Reading Dostoevsky’s Complete WorksBiographical portrait of Dostoevsky and his catastrophic, redemptive lifeEditorial notes on each textA full chronology of Dostoevsky’s life and worksDesigned for serious readers, students, and the classroom alikeAbout Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)
Sentenced to death for revolutionary activity at twenty-eight. Pardoned at the foot of the gallows. Sent to four years of Siberian hard labor. Returned to Petersburg to write the novels that would change the form of the novel itself. Married twice, gambled compulsively, lost a son, found God, wrote The Brothers Karamazov, died of pulmonary hemorrhage at fifty-nine. Buried in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Read continuously by every generation since.
He is the writer Nietzsche called “the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn.” He is the novelist whose four major books are read in every major language on earth. He is the inescapable presence in modern fiction.
