Synopses & Reviews
How does Dostoevskyand#8217;s fiction illuminate questions that are important to us today? What does the author have to say about memory and invention, the nature of evidence, and why we read? How did his readings of such writers as Rousseau, Maturin, and Dickens filter into his own novelistic consciousness? And what happens to a novel like Crime and Punishment when it is the subject of a classroom discussion or a conversation? In this original and wide-ranging book, Dostoevsky scholar Robin Feuer Miller approaches the authorand#8217;s major works from a variety of angles and offers a new set of keys to understanding Dostoevskyand#8217;s world.
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Taking Dostoevskyand#8217;s own conversion as her point of departure, Miller explores themes of conversion and healing in his fiction, where spiritual and artistic transfigurations abound. She also addresses questions of literary influence, intertextuality, and the potency of what the author termed and#147;ideas in the air.and#8221; For readers new to Dostoevskyand#8217;s writings as well as those deeply familiar with them, Miller offers lucid insights into his works and into their continuing power to engage readers in our own times.
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Review
and#8220;In this lucid and highly personal book, Robin Miller provides a new vantage point from which to view the subtleties and ambiguities that arise from Dostoevskyand#8217;s major texts.and#8221;and#8212;Joseph Frank, Emeritus Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
Review
"A splendid achievement.andnbsp;This Dostoevsky is 'unfinished' in the best sense: still speaking to us, instructing us on the varieties of religious experience, and urging upon us the importance of reading books as well as human beings with equal care."and#8212;Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University
Review
and#8220;In these wide-ranging essays, Robin Feuer Miller draws on her intimate knowledge of Dostoevskyand#8217;s notebooks and letters to reveal the complex and even contradictory impulses that find expression in his fictionand#8212;fiction which, as she eloquently argues, nevertheless remains unsurpassed in its power to move us and change our lives.and#8221;and#8212;J. M. Coetzee
Review
and#8220;Richly informed, these linked essays are meditations on key aspects of Dostoevskyand#8217;s writing, seen from angles sometimes familiar, sometimes startling, but always illuminating. Robin Miller is a wonderfully sensitive reader. Her chapters on Dostoevskyand#8217;s use of parable and on the complex nature of conversion in his fiction are by themselves worth the price of this volume.and#8221;and#8212;Donald Fanger, Harvard University
Review
"Patient, subtle and illuminating, this book invites readers to unfinished journeys of their ownand#8212;not because any of the eight linked chapters or circuits is incomplete, but because each one lays the ground for ongoing reflection and tempts us to further voyages in Dostoevsky and beyond."and#8212;Michael Wood, Princeton University
Review
"[A] beautifully written study. . . . Miller's deep understanding of Dostoevsky's narrative strategies and of his double-edged psychology combined with her own poetic wisdom spark epiphanies in her readers."and#8212;Deborah A. Martinsen, Christianity and Literature
About the Author
Robin Feuer Miller is Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities; professor of Russian and comparative literature; and chair, Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature, Brandeis University. She has published extensively on Russian literature and recently edited The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel. She lives in Newton, MA.