Dosteyevsky was born in Moscow on October 30, 1821 and is the second son of a military doctor.    Dostoyevsky grew up in materially comfort but psychologically damaging circumstances. He was educated at home and at private school.After finishing a military engineering education in 1843, he soon turned to literature.In 1849. Dostoyevsky was arrested for participation in a mildly subversive group, the Petrashevsky Circle, and sentenced first to prison and then to a harsh exile in Siberia for a total of ten years. These experiences--and especially his last-minute reprieve from an expected execution--led him to embrace more fervently his Orthodox religious values and to reject the West as a model for Russian society. Along with the consumptive wife he had married, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 and there entered upon the major phase of his literary career.  He died on January 28, 1881 at the age of 59 from a lung hemorage.
 
 

Crime and Punishment  (1996)   This novel is about a desperate young man, named Raskolnikov, who plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. The man thinks it is just to commit murder because it will ultimately benefit humanity.  This book takes the reader on a journey into the criminal mind and exposes the soul of a man possessed by both good and evil, who cannot escape his own conscience.

The Brothers Karamazov  (1990)   One of Dostoyevsky's most striking novel.
                     The Brothers Karamazov  was first published in the early 1900s--roughly 20 years after Dostoyevsky's death--not only for its stylistic writing, but for its brutal honesty. Dmitri Karamazov, the main character, was the focal character in the drama. His brother, Ivan was an intellectual with big talk and little action.  Minor characters include, an elder Karamazov, a third brother, a hermit, and a monk  In an era when expressing one's thoughts and innermost feelings was frowned upon, Dostoyevsky's characters exude an openness rarely seen in literature.

The Idiot (1868)    This was written during one of Dostoevsky's travels while in Europe. Not only does it reveal the author's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, but also affords his most powerful indictment of a Russia struggling to confirm to the contemporary Europe while
sinking under the weight of Western materialism. It is about a good man who clashes with the emptiness  of a society that cannot accomodate his moral idealism.

Notes From Underground  (1864)

Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky --Eight short masterworks, including White Nights, Notes from Underground, The Gambler, A Gentle Creature, The Dream of a           Ridiculous Man, and others.

                   Devils
                   The Gambler
                   The House of the Dead
                   Grand Inquisitor
                   The Adolescent
                   The Double
                   The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants