The Brothers Karamazov

Brat'ya Karamazovy · Bratya Karamazovy

Fyodor Dostoevsky · serialised 1879–1880 · Russian

Cornerstone
Poetry, fiction & drama
Orthodox
Philosophy & apologetics

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What it is

Dostoevsky's last novel follows three brothers, the passionate Dmitri, the sceptical Ivan, and the novice monk Alyosha, through the murder of their father. Around the crime it stages a sustained argument about God, freedom, and suffering, from Ivan's parable of the Grand Inquisitor to the teachings of the elder Zosima.

Why it matters

Often ranked among the greatest novels ever written, it gives the case against God its strongest voice and answers it not with an argument but with lives of active love. It is a defining work of the Orthodox Christian imagination.

Reading it

About 800 pages.

Read it free

Project Gutenberg (Garnett)

Influenced by2

Built on
The Bible · Composed over many centuries
The Brothers Karamazov takes as its epigraph John 12:24, the grain of wheat that must die to bear fruit.
Epigraph
Built on
Ascetical Homilies · Isaac of Nineveh · late 7th c.
In The Brothers Karamazov, the servant Grigory reads the sermons of 'the God-fearing Father Isaac the Syrian', whose teaching on mercy echoes through Father Zosima's.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book III.1

Influenced1

Built on it
The Long Loneliness · Dorothy Day · 1952
In The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day quotes Father Zosima from The Brothers Karamazov: 'Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.'
The Long Loneliness

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