The Brothers Karamazov
When the dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is found murdered in his provincial Russian town, suspicion falls first on his eldest son Dmitri, a hot-blooded ex-soldier tangled in a rivalry with his father over both money and a woman. Around that central crime Dostoevsky builds a vast, searching novel about three very different brothers, Dmitri the sensualist, Ivan the brooding intellectual, and Alyosha the novice monk, and the illegitimate servant Smerdyakov who ghosts through their lives. The trial that follows is less a whodunit than an argument about faith, doubt, free will, and the possibility of goodness in a world that so often seems to deny it. Finished just months before Dostoevsky's death in 1880, The Brothers Karamazov is widely regarded as his final and most complete statement on the human soul.
Themes & atmosphere
Books in conversation with The Brothers Karamazov
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
Also by Fyodor Dostoevsky
All works by Fyodor Dostoevsky →
What you might want to know about The Brothers Karamazov
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Old Fyodor Karamazov is a hateful, hard-drinking landowner in a provincial Russian town with three legitimate sons, soldier Dmitri, intellectual Ivan, and novice monk Alyosha, plus an illegitimate cook. One of them is going to kill him.
Yes. The Brothers Karamazov is around 800 pages of dense Russian philosophical novel, with patronymic names, theological debates, and long monologues. The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation is widely recommended. Most readers commit to a long-haul read.
Yes. The Brothers Karamazov was first published in 1880 and is in the public domain. Free editions of older translations are available through Project Gutenberg. Modern translations remain copyrighted.
The Brothers Karamazov was written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1880.
The Brothers Karamazov is a standalone novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, not part of a series.
The Brothers Karamazov is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.