Introduction

This was Dostoevsky's last novel; he died less than four months after finishing it. The greedy, lecherous landowner Fyodor Karamazov has three sons: the passionate, reckless Dmitri; the cool, rational Ivan, who doubts everything; and the gentle, devout Alyosha, a novice at the monastery; there is also an illegitimate son, the sullen servant Smerdyakov. Dmitri and his father become bitter enemies over money and the same woman. One night old Karamazov is murdered, and all the evidence points to Dmitri. But who really killed him? And who bears the moral responsibility for the murder? Ivan's tale of 'The Grand Inquisitor' is among the most famous passages in world literature: 'If there is no God, everything is permitted.' Freud called it 'the most magnificent novel ever written'. The work is translated in several volumes.