Brothers Karamazov (Annotated)

Sigmund Freud Called It The Most Magnificent Novel Ever Written. Dostoevsky Spent Nearly Two Years Writing The Brothers Karamazov, Which Was Published As A Serial In The Russian Messenger From January 1879 To November 1880. Dostoevsky Died Less Than Four Months After Its Publication. Set In 19th-century Russia, The Brothers Karamazov Is A Passionate Philosophical Novel That Enters Deeply Into Questions Of God, Free Will, And Morality. It Is A Theological Drama Dealing With Problems Of Faith, Doubt And Reason In The Context Of A Modernizing Russia, With A Plot That Revolves Around The Subject Of Patricide. Dostoevsky Composed Much Of The Novel In Staraya Russa, Which Inspired The Main Setting. It Has Been Acclaimed As One Of The Supreme Achievements In Literature. The Brothers Karamazov Has Had A Deep Influence On Many Public Figures Over The Years For Widely Varying Reasons. Admirers Include Scientists Such As Albert Einstein, Philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein And Martin Heidegger, As Well As Writers Such As Virginia Woolf, Cormac Mccarthy, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, And Frederick Buechner. Sigmund Freud Was Fascinated With What He Saw As Its Oedipal Themes. In 1928 Freud Published A Paper Titled Dostoevsky And Parricide In Which He Investigated Dostoevsky's Own Neuroses. Freud Claimed That Dostoevsky's Epilepsy Was Not A Natural Condition But Instead A Physical Manifestation Of The Author's Hidden Guilt Over His Own Father's Death. According To Freud, Dostoevsky (and All Other Sons) Wished For The Death Of His Father Because Of Latent Desire For His Mother; Citing The Fact That Dostoevsky's Epileptic Fits Began At Age 18, The Year His Father Died. It Followed That More Obvious Themes Of Patricide And Guilt, Especially In The Form Of The Moral Guilt Illustrated By Ivan Karamazov, Were Further Literary Evidence Of His Theory. Martin Heidegger, A Seminal Figure Of Existentialism, Identified Dostoevsky's Thought As One Of The Most Important Sources For His Early And Best Known Book, Being And Time. Of The Two Portraits Heidegger Kept On The Wall Of His Office, One Was Of Dostoevsky. Nobel Prize Laureate William Faulkner Reread The Book Regularly, Claiming It As His Greatest Literary Inspiration Next To Shakespeare's Works And The Bible. He Once Wrote That He Felt American Literature Had Produced Nothing Yet Great Enough That Might Compare To Dostoyevsky's Novel.