This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank's widely acclaimed biography of Dostoevsky, covers the six most remarkably productive years in the novelist's entire career. It was in this short span of time that Dostoevsky produced three of his greatest novels - "Crime and Punishment", "The Idiot", and "The Devils" - and two of his best novellas, "The Gambler" and "The Eternal Husband". All these masterpieces were written in the midst of harrowing practical and economic circumstances, as Dostoevsky moved from place to place, frequently giving way to his passion for roulette. Having remarried and fled from Russia to escape importuning creditors and grasping dependents, he could not return for fear of being thrown into debtor's prison. He and his young bride, who twice made him a father, lived obscurely and penuriously in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, as he toiled away at his writing, their only source of income. All the while, he worried that his recurrent epileptic attacks were impairing his literary capacities. His enforced exile intensified not only his love for his native land but also his abhorrence of the doctrines of Russian Nihilism - which he saw as an alien European importation infecting the Russian psyche. Two novels of this period were thus an attempt to conjure this looming spectre of moral-social disintegration, while "The Idiot" offered an image of Dostoevsky's conception of the Russian Christian ideal that he hoped would take its place.

作者介绍

约瑟夫•弗兰克（Joseph Frank，1918—2013） 普林斯顿大学比较文学荣誉教授，斯坦福大学比较文学和斯拉夫语语言文学荣誉教授。代表作五卷本《陀思妥耶夫斯基》曾获美国国家图书奖（传记类），两次（美国大学优秀学生联谊会的）克里斯蒂安•高斯奖，两次（现代语言协会的）詹姆斯•拉塞尔•洛厄尔奖，《洛杉矶时报》图书奖以及另外一些荣誉。另著有《现代小说的空间形式》、《宗教与理性之间：俄国文学与文化随笔》、《回应现代性：文化政治随笔》等。

译者介绍

戴大洪 1982年毕业于北京工业学院（现北京理工大学）光学工程系。译有《第三共和国的崩溃：1940年法国崩溃之研究》、《雷蒙德•卡佛：一位作家的一生》、《古拉格：一部历史》。