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The Brothers Karamazov
1880 · translated from the Russian · 1020 pages
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
About the text. The free text is clean — we find fewer than 1 damaged word in 400. We publish the count so you can judge it for yourself. The full Russian text is public domain and free — linked below.
On this page: a summary of The Brothers Karamazov, and which translation this edition uses.
Dostoevsky lost his childhood faith to utopian socialism, was sentenced to death for it, reprieved on the scaffold, and spent four years in a Siberian prison with nothing to read but a New Testament. His last novel is the book that came out of that: a murder story that is also the fullest statement of the case against God in nineteenth-century literature, and the answer he set against it.
The convert behind the argument
Arrested in 1849 as a member of the Petrashevsky circle, Dostoevsky was subjected to a mock execution and then sent to hard labor at Omsk, where the only book permitted was the Gospels. He came out with the faith that shaped everything he wrote afterwards — and never lost his ability to state the opposing case, which is why the atheism in his novels is more convincing than most atheists manage.
Summary
The novel turns on the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov and the question of which of his sons is responsible — the sensualist Dmitri, the intellectual Ivan, the novice Alyosha, or the servant Smerdyakov. The legal plot is genuine and gripping, and it is also a frame.
The center of the book is Book V, ‘Pro and Contra’, in which Ivan lays out his rebellion: not a denial that God exists but a refusal to accept a world whose harmony is purchased with the suffering of children. He follows it with the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, in which Christ returns to Seville and is arrested by a church that has decided humanity cannot bear the freedom he offered.
Dostoevsky’s answer is not an argument but a life — the elder Zosima, and Alyosha after him — and he knew that his statement of the case against was formidable. He wrote to his editor about the anxiety of having to answer it. Readers have disagreed ever since about whether he did, which is exactly why the book belongs on a shelf of apologetics rather than in a devotional list.
Who was Fyodor Dostoevsky?
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was born in Moscow, trained as a military engineer, and made his name with Poor Folk in 1846. He fell in with the Petrashevsky circle of utopian socialists, was arrested in 1849, subjected to a mock execution in front of a firing squad, and sent to four years of hard labor in Omsk followed by compulsory military service.
The Gospels were the only book allowed in the prison, and the faith he formed there governed the great novels of his last two decades — Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, which he finished a few months before his death in 1881.
Which translation of The Brothers Karamazov is this?
Constance Garnett’s English translation is free at Project Gutenberg and remains the most widely read public-domain version; the Russian original is free at Wikisource. Our edition is a corrected typesetting of the Garnett translation.
Common questions
- Why is a novel on a list of apologetics books?
- Because The Brothers Karamazov argues. Ivan’s rebellion and the Grand Inquisitor are the strongest statement of the case against God in nineteenth-century literature, and Dostoevsky wrote them in order to answer them with the figures of Zosima and Alyosha. It is a case made in fiction rather than in propositions.
- Was Dostoevsky a convert?
- He lost the faith of his childhood to utopian socialism as a young man, was arrested for it in 1849, and recovered his belief during four years of Siberian hard labor, where the New Testament was the only book he was allowed.
A note on the text. The Brothers Karamazov is in the public domain. The text below is free to read at the source we link. The original text is also available free here.
That free text is already well proofread — we measure about 0.1 errors per 1,000 characters. We publish the measurement so you can judge the free text for yourself.
Related reading
His great contemporary
A Confession
Leo Tolstoy · 1882
Tolstoy’s own account of the crisis that overtook him at the height of his fame — the other half of the Russian nineteenth century’s argument with itself.
The same tradition
Чтения о богочеловечестве (Lectures on Divine Humanity)
Vladimir Solovyov · 1881
Also among russian on the apologetics shelf.
The same tradition
War, Progress and the End of History
Vladimir Solovyov · 1900
Also among russian on the apologetics shelf.
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