The bare events of Dostoevsky’s life – his father murdered by peasants, his own ordeal before a firing squad, then exile in Siberia, his epilepsy, gambling, poverty and debts – go far to account for his strange intensity of vision. This biography, first published in 1931, traces his wayward development, from his strict and secluded childhood to his debut as ‘literary pimple’, through his years of anguish, to his maturity as artist and final apotheosis as Russian patriot.

Written some fifty years after Dostoevsky’s death, when the material necessary for a full study first became available, Carr’s classic study reflects an approach to the life and genius of Dostoevsky dominated by the concerns of the mid-twentieth century. With its illuminating chapters on each of the great novels and its stylistic precision, this treatment of Dostoevsky remains a perfect introduction to the man, both as a novelist and as a human being.