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Humiliated And Insulted
Love that destroys. Wealth that corrupts. And suffering elevated to philosophy. Ivan Petrovich is a struggling writer in St. Petersburg, tubercular and impoverished, surviving on the margins of literary life. He loves Natasha Ikhmeneva hopelessly-she considers him merely a friend. She has abandoned her respectable family to live with Prince Alyosha Valkovsky, the charming but weak son of a predatory aristocrat who has systematically destroyed the Ikhmenev family through fraud and manipulation. Natasha has sacrificed everything for Alyosha: family, reputation, security, dignity. Yet Alyosha, while genuinely fond of her, is too shallow to reciprocate adequately. He plans to marry a wealthy heiress while expecting Natasha to accept this betrayal magnanimously. Rather than leaving him, Natasha decides to facilitate his marriage-reasoning that true love demands she prioritize his happiness over her own dignity. Meanwhile, Ivan rescues Nelly, a dying orphan girl whose mysterious past gradually reveals connections to the Valkovsky family's crimes. Her grandfather has been ruined by Prince Valkovsky senior. Her mother was seduced and abandoned by him, driven to prostitution and early death. Nelly herself is dying of consumption, traumatized by cruelty she witnessed but cannot fully articulate. As Ivan navigates between these suffering figures-attempting reconciliations, uncovering secrets, witnessing degradations he cannot prevent-Prince Valkovsky senior articulates his philosophy: sophisticated nihilism that acknowledges no moral constraints, pursues pleasure and advantage without guilt, manipulates others as tools, and mocks conventional morality as hypocrisy masking universal selfishness. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this immediately after returning from Siberian exile-a decade of prison camp and compulsory military service following his arrest and mock execution. The novel bridges his early sentimental realism and the psychological depth of his mature masterpieces. It contains melodramatic plotting, excessive coincidence, and Victorian sentimentality that he would later transcend. Yet within these conventional forms, one detects the developing genius: the psychological penetration, the obsession with suffering and humiliation, the philosophical seriousness struggling to emerge from melodrama. Contemporary critics recognized its emotional power while noting its structural weaknesses. Modern readers will likely find it dated compared to Dostoevsky's later works. Yet those willing to accept its Victorian conventions will discover a novel of genuine intensity-flawed but fascinating, showing a major writer finding his voice while still constrained by the traditions he would soon revolutionize. The insulted and injured-not merely poor but systematically degraded, reduced to objects for others' use. And the question: can love and forgiveness redeem what power and cruelty have destroyed?
€ 16,57 -
The Dostoevsky Collection
A young intellectual becomes enthralled by a landlady and the dark, powerful man who seems to hold her in his sway. A copying clerk goes mad not from sorrow but from an excess of happiness he cannot contain. A drunkard steals a pair of trousers and cannot live with the knowledge. A man at a children's party quietly decides to marry a wealthy little girl when she comes of age. A pawnbroker sits beside his dead wife and tries to explain - to himself, to the empty room, to anyone who will listen - why she opened the window. These five works span nearly thirty years of Dostoevsky's career, from the experiments of his first years to the technical radicalism of his maturity. They range from Gothic suspense to social satire to the almost unbearable psychological intensity of Krotkaya, in which a man's attempt to understand his wife's suicide becomes the most precise possible portrait of his failure to understand her life. Across all of them, Dostoevsky is doing what only he could do: finding, in the compressed space of the short form, the specific pressure point at which a human being breaks - or fails to break - or breaks in a way they cannot see. This is Dostoevsky at his most concentrated: five chambers, five experiments, five different answers to the same relentless question about what we are capable of and what we cannot face.
€ 13,61 -
The Dostoevsky Collection
Two men exchange polite letters and swindle each other by degrees. A miser dies in a communal apartment and reveals, in death, the secret his whole life was built to protect. A boy of eleven, writing from a prison cell his author was not sure he would survive, discovers courage and love on a golden summer estate. The dead continue their petty social performances beneath the cemetery ground, conscious and unreformed and thoroughly themselves. A husband hides under a bed. The most dangerous character in Dostoevsky's most political novel confesses, in a chapter suppressed for his lifetime, to something that cannot be forgiven and that he cannot bring himself to feel. The Dostoevsky Collection - Part 2 gathers six works from across nearly three decades of his career - comic, tragic, surreal, devastating - each one a different demonstration of the same underlying commitment: to follow the material wherever it leads, and not to stop when it becomes uncomfortable. From the tightly wound farce of The Wife of Another to the radical formal experiment of Bobok to the moral abyss of The Confession of Stavrogin, these are works by a writer who understood that literature's task is not to offer reassurance but to see clearly, and who never, in any register, allowed himself to do otherwise. Funny, strange, harrowing, and impossible to dismiss.
€ 12,86 -
The Dostoevsky Collection
Fyodor Dostoevsky is often remembered for his profound and psychologically complex novels, but his shorter works showcase the same brilliance in more concentrated form. The Dostoevsky Collection - Part 3 brings together a compelling selection of stories that reveal his range as a writer-from satirical absurdity to melancholic romance, from social critique to intimate personal reflections. This volume offers a unique perspective on Dostoevsky's evolving literary style and his deep understanding of the human soul. The collection begins with The Crocodile, one of Dostoevsky's most unusual and darkly comic tales. When a man is swallowed whole by a crocodile in a Petersburg arcade, he remains alive inside the creature and insists on continuing his work. A sharp satire of capitalism, bureaucracy, and intellectual arrogance, the story blends surrealism with biting social commentary. Mr. Polzounkov is a more intimate tragedy, depicting a man whose moment of weakness sets him on an irreversible path of self-destruction-a reflection on fate, morality, and lost potential. White Nights, one of Dostoevsky's most lyrical and emotionally resonant stories, follows a lonely dreamer who experiences a fleeting but life-changing romance. It is a meditation on love, longing, and the passage of time, capturing the beauty and pain of unfulfilled dreams. An Unfortunate Story provides a satirical counterpoint, following a well-intentioned but socially awkward government official whose blunders reveal the absurdities of class and status in 19th-century Russia. A Spring in Petersburg captures the atmosphere of the city that shaped Dostoevsky's life and work, offering a vivid portrait of its struggles and contradictions. The collection concludes with Memories of Madame A. G. Dostoievski, a rare personal account by his wife, Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevskaya. Her memoirs provide invaluable insight into the daily life, creative struggles, and personal relationships of the great writer, offering a deeply humanizing perspective on a literary giant. This volume presents Dostoevsky's work in fresh translations that preserve the richness and intensity of his prose, ensuring that modern readers can fully experience the depth of his storytelling. The Dostoevsky Collection - Part 3 is an essential addition for admirers of classic literature, offering a journey through the mind of one of the most insightful and profound writers in history.
€ 13,24 -
Poor Folk
In 1840s St. Petersburg the ageing copyist Makar Dievushkin is, with various degrees of subtlety, trying to woo Barbara Dobroselova, a young woman who has had a swift fall in fortunes. Told in alternating letters to each other, their past stories and current hopes play out in raw and personal detail, as the daily realities of an uncaring and expensive town take hold.Poor Folk was Fyodor Dostoevsky's first novel and was written to try and cover his escalating debts from his expensive lifestyle and gambling addiction. Luckily for Dostoevsky, it was an immediate success when it was published in the St. Petersburg Collection, and the accolades from critics such as Belinsky and Herzen propelled him into the high echelons of Russian literary society. This edition is the 1915 translation by C. J. Hogarth.
€ 21,95 -
The Idiot
Acclaimed by the 20th-century Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin for its "polyphony" (a literary concept introduced by Bakhtin to describe a plurality of voices within a narrative), The Idiot is regarded by modern critics as one of Dostoevsky's most experimental and artistically uneven novels.The novel follows the entrance of the epileptic Prince Muishkin-a character Dostoevsky meant to represent a "positively good and beautiful man"-into a circle of Russian high society characterized by vanity, greed, and social ambition. Thanks to his epileptic condition and his simplicity, earnestness, and kindness of heart, Muishkin is frequently branded by his newfound social circle as the titular "idiot"; but in reality, he's a man of extraordinary sensitivity and insight. His arrival in society sets off a series of dramatic events and interpersonal strife centered around himself and his distant relations.The Idiot drew upon many of Dostoevsky's significant personal experiences, such as his Russian Orthodox faith, his experience of nearly being executed in 1849, and his own struggle with epilepsy, all of which inform his depiction of Prince Muishkin's distinctive psychology.
€ 34,95 -
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment tells the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, an ex-student who plans to murder a pawnbroker to test his theory of personality. Having accomplished the deed, Raskolnikov struggles with mental anguish while trying to both avoid the consequences and hide his guilt from his friends and family.Dostoevsky's original idea for the novel centered on the Marmeladov family and the impact of alcoholism in Russia, but inspired by a double murder in France he decided to rework it around the new character of Raskolnikov. The novel was first serialized in The Russian Messenger over the course of 1866, where it was an instant success. It was published in a single volume in 1867. Presented here is Constance Garnett's 1914 translation.
€ 34,95 -
The Idiot
€ 8,50 -
Notes From Underground
€ 8,50 -
Poor Folk
€ 20,95 -
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
A Profound Reflection on Life, Redemption, and the Search for Truth€ 13,95 -
White Nights
A Poignant Tale of Love, Loneliness, and Dreams€ 20,50