The powerful, impassioned, and often frenetic prose of Fedor Dostoevskii
continues to fascinate readers in the twenty-first century, even though
we are far removed from Dostoevskii's Russia. A Dostoevskii Companion:
Texts and Contexts aims to help students and readers navigate the
writer's fiction and his world, to better understand the cultural and
sociopolitical milieu in which Dostoevskii lived and wrote. Rather than
offer a single definitive view of the author, the book contains a
collection of documents from Dostoevskii's own time (excerpts from his
letters, his journalism, and what his contemporaries wrote about him),
as well as extracts from the major critical studies of Dostoevskii from
the contemporary academy. The volume equips readers with a deeper
understanding of Dostoevskii's world and his writing, offering new paths
and directions for interpreting his writing.