The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library) | Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library) | Fyodor Dostoevsky | A long read, but well worth it

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The Brothers Karam...

	The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library) Fyodor Dostoevsky Everyman's Library, 1992 - 848 pages average customer review:based on 217 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful!!!

This is my favorite book of all time. By the time I had graduated high school, I had already read it twice. I wrote a term paper on it in college. When I deployed to Iraq, I made sure this book went with me. I am planning on picking it up again in the near future. A true classic that should be read by all. I cannot recommend this book enough.

A long read, but well worth it

For all the people who thought this book was too long, I would like to draw your attention to the Product Info section that Amazon so nicely provides. Yes it is a long book, but you knew that going in now didn't you. I also understand that the book is slow at parts but I have found that most Russian novels are. You guys are the kind of people who go see a black and white film and say the movie sucks because there is no color.

Those who are willing to read the 700+ pages are in for a real treat. This is far and away the best book I have ever read. The characters are incredible and the conflict between faith and skepticism is gripping through out the entire book. The rest of you can maybe read some short stories and work on reading without mouthing the words.

As far as the translation goes, I really can't comment. From what I can tell you are either a Pevear guy or a Garret guy.

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When Reason Fails, Faith Enters

Reading THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a journey through the human soul with no signposts along the way. To stay on the path requres firm reason, so we think, but when the signs fall down, we are left only with faith to guide our way. Dostoevsky well understood the limitations of reason as an infallible guide in maintaining our human institutions of family and justice. The Karamazov family is the living symbol of a family and a society that runs only inefficiently at best and malicioucly at worst.

Each member of the Karamazov family is a distinct character type, with each type hiding a series of conflicting and mutually exclusive traits. From the first few pages, we can see that in this clan at least the cement that binds the family is not based on just reason, nor on a sustaining faith that there is a divine guiding principle hovering above everyone, but upon a rigid but flawed reason that dictates that the patriarch must be right in all matters. Later, reason again is assailed in the court trial of Dmitri when reason points to him as the killer of his father, but the true murderer escapes legal justice only to punish himself with suicide, a form of divine justice.

Fyodor Karamazov is nobody's idea of a caring and nurturing patriarch. He is a caricature of a gross, insensitive, control freak who sees no reason why he should not be a sexual libertine as well. But he is the family head, and in the Russian culture of the era, that made him the unquestioned leader. His three sons are conflicting and confusing complexes of a life suffered under Fyodor's cruel hand. Dmitri, the eldest, sees clearly his father's faults, while acknowledging that he himself has inherited some of his vilest ones, yet he also knows that within himself is a counterbalancing core of goodness. Ivan, the middle son, is the poet/seer/intellectual of the family. Although he has no direct role in his father's murder, he cannot absolve himself of at least moral culpability. Later, Dostoevski chooses Ivan to be in the fugue Grand Inquisitor scene to stand trial with only Ivan and his personal devils in court. And there is the youngest, Alyosha, one who is good, noble, and trusting. It is only Alyosha who is capable of allowing faith to triumph over reason.

Each of the three brothers is a study in a complexity of contrasts. Each asks himself questions that form the spiritual underpinning of the novel, namely what is the proper role that one should find in the eternal battle between faith, reason, evil, and God. The father, of course, is too course to even think on such a plane. Dmitri can ask himself only a limited variety, most of which relate only to his own often contrary behavior. Ivan's questions are more probing than those of his brother's, but they too are limited to what he sees as the proper role of church to state. It is Alyosha who is able to ponder the most serious and profound questions of his family: where does man's faith in reason end and where does his faith in faith begin? By the end of the novel, each brother has seen at least a partial unlifting of the stifling veil of reason. In THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Dostoevsky takes the reader to where the Karamazov brothers have painfully arrived and hopes that this reader's journey may have had more deeply entrenched moral signposts.

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"Three Cheers For Karamazov!"

I had been wanting to read this book for years. Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite books and to read Dostoevsky's masterpiece, Brothers Karamazov, was something I have been looking forward to for quite some time. Now, having just finished it, I can gladly state that I was not disappointed, yet it was nothing like Crime and Punishment and it was not at all what I expected. Truly, I suppose, nothing could have really prepared me for this book. I don't think any two readers could experience the same feelings on its completion. It was a long book and I took my time, but it felt like a short story. Although over 1000 pages, the story timeline was only a few months. There is a lot of well written commentary, subplotting, reflection, and debate over what amounts to very simple themes (not unlike reading the Bible). On a superficial level, the story was not as enticing as Crime and Punishment, the characters were not that likeable, and the setting was quite bleak. However, by the story's end I was quite endeared to the characters and to Russia because of their raw humanity. That amongst the brutishness, the desperation, and the poverty, there lay all of the uniqueness, wonder, and beauty of humanity. The Brothers Karamazov, Dimitri (the flesh), Ivan (the mind), Alyosha (the spirit) were the embodiment of all that make up humanity for better or for worse. Their half brother, Smerdyakov, depicts one who evades these human attributes perhaps out of cowardness and fear. The reader witnesses the tragedy and the joy between the struggle of flesh, mind, and spirit. This battle is deep, twisted, and, I suspect, revealed to every reader of this book in a unique and personal way. To me, what was revealed, was that this struggle is worthy, beautiful, and necessary and to avoid it because of fear and cowardness is a sinful waste. Read this book for yourself and find out what it means to you. It may not be for everyone. It was published in 1880 Russia and its message runs much deeper than today's best selling suspense, drama writing that is much easier to read and gives more immediate gratification. But if you are patient and enduring, the payoff is priceless. Nothing great comes easy. Three cheers for Karamazov!

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another great

love this book, great writing. a lot of times Dostoevsky only gets due credit for Crime and Punishment, but the Brothers K is a magnificent peice of lit and a definate must read.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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