Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky completed his final novel— The Brothers Karamazov—in 1880. A work of universal appeal and significance, his exploration of good and evil immediately gained an international readership and today “remains harrowingly alive in the face of our present day worries, paradoxes, and joys,” observes Dostoevsky scholar Robin Feuer Miller. In this engaging and original book, she guides us through the complexities of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, offering keen insights and a celebration of the author’s unparalleled powers of imagination. Miller’s critical companion to The Brothers Karamazov explores the novel’s structure, themes, characters, and artistic strategies while illuminating its myriad philosophical and narrative riddles. She discusses the historical significance of the book and its initial reception, and in a new preface discusses the latest scholarship on Dostoevsky and the novel that crowned his career. 

"It is thrilling to read The Brothers Karamazov with this companion volume—for Miller's book is designed to be read simultaneously with Dostoevsky's—and those who do so are transformed by the experience."—Cathy Popkin, Columbia University, "Robin Feuer Miller has reached a perfect balance between addressing structure and meaning: she approaches the novel as a world of metaphysical and moral choices embodied in the narrative form."—Irina Paperno, University of California, Berkeley, "An excellent introduction to The Brothers Karamazov. . . . Miller is remarkably successful in picking up and explicating all these echoes in their various transformation as they appear from one book to the other. The further she takes us, the richer Dostoevsky's text-and her text-becomes."—Russian Review , "All praise to Yale University Press for reprinting Robin Feuer Miller's The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of the Novel. Already a classic, this profound book is a must-read for all."—Deborah A. Martinsen, Christianity and Literature

Robin Feuer Miller is Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities; professor of Russian and comparative literature; and chair, Department of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures, Brandeis University. Her most recent book is Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Journey, published by Yale University Press. She lives in Newton, MA.