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Showing results for tags 'fyodor dostoevsky'.
Found 2 results
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This was named The Karamazov Brothers on my copy (Wordsworth Classics) as opposed to the more usual The Brothers Karamazov and I've gone for the one-y-spelling of Dostoevsky because that too was on the book. This was absolutely epic! Eight hundred and seventy pages of goodness. I struggled a lot with this and only managed 16 to 20 pages at a time (50 pages is my usual rate) and it took me a month and two days. The story of the Karamazov Brothers, of which there are three (and a possible fourth), and their father. Nineteenth Century wordy (think every eye-brow raise and every intake of breath) and formal prose - compared to today's fare - and was absolutely magnificent. I moved from e-book to paper and back again for a fortnight through this due to personal circumstances which I won't bore you with and that movement proved to be very interesting indeed. I was lucky that I had chosen the same translator, Constance Garnett, so that kept it consistent. I did check online notes for a while and the most useful part of that was the names of the characters and explaining, somewhat, why some of them had three, or in some cases more, different names which did prove to be confusing especially at the beginning. I chose the full unabridged version (both e-book and paper) and knew that it was long. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it.
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The house of the dead that Fyodor Dostoevsky is referring to is a Siberian labour camp and the book portrays the horrorific life of the convicts. The book is based on Dostoevsky's own experiences in just such a labour camp. Despite the fact that the prisoners suffer horribly it's not a particularly horrific book to read, imho. It is extremely well written and very well translated - as far as I can tell - and is very well worth reading.
