Review
[Frank] has created a dramatic unity out of Dostoevsky's chaotic life and art. . . . [His] work will surely remain the classic study of Dostoevsky the anti-utopian humanist.


Book Description
This fifth and final volume of Joseph Frank's justly celebrated literary and cultural biography of Dostoevsky renders with a rare intelligence and grace the last decade of the writer's life, the years in which he wrote A Raw Youth, Diary of a Writer, and his crowning triumph: The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky's final years at last won him the universal approval toward which he had always aspired. While describing his idiosyncratic relationship to the Russian state, Frank also details Doestoevsky's continuing rivalries with Turgenev and Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's appearance at the Pushkin Festival in June 1880, which preceded his death by one year, marked the apotheosis of his career--and of his life as a spokesman for the Russian spirit. There he delivered his famous speech on Pushkin before an audience stirred to a feverish emotional pitch: "Ours is universality attained not by the sword, but by the force of brotherhood and of our brotherly striving toward the reunification of mankind." This is the Dostoevsky who has entered the patrimony of world literature, though he was not always capable of living up to such exalted ideals. The writer's death in St. Petersburg in January of 1881 concludes this unparalleled literary biography--one truly worthy of Dostoevsky's genius and of the remarkable time and place in which he lived.


About the Author
Joseph Frank is Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and Professor of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literature Emeritus at Stanford University. Previous volumes of Dostoevsky have received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, two Christian Gauss Awards, two James Russell Lowell Awards of the Modern Language Association, a "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize, and other honors. In addition to the previous volumes of Dostoevsky, Frank is the author of "Through the Russian Prism: Essays on Literature and Culture" (Princeton), "The Widening Gyre", and "The Idea of Spatial Form".

ANNOTATION

The second of three volume on the famous Russian writer, describing his years of interment and military service.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Dostoevsky's final years at last won him the universal approval toward which he had always aspired. While describing his idiosyncratic relationship to the Russian state, Frank also details Dostoevsky's continuing rivalries with Turgenev and Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's appearance at the Pushkin Festival in June 1880, which preceded his death by one year, marked the apotheosis of his career - and of his life as a spokesman for the Russian spirit. There he delivered his famous speech on Pushkin before an audience stirred to a feverish emotional pitch: "Ours is universality attained not by the sword, but by the force of brotherhood and of our brotherly striving toward the reunification of mankind." This is the Dostoevsky who has entered the patrimony of world literature, though he was not always capable of living up to such exalted ideals." The writer's death in St. Petersburg in January of 1881 concludes the literary biography - one truly worthy of Dostoevsky's genius and of the remarkable time and place in which he lived.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times Book Review

A monumental achievement....[A] multifaceted tribute from an erudite and penetrating cultural critic to one of the great masters of 19th century fiction. — Michael Scammell

Library Journal

These two works add immensely to our understanding of Dostoevsky, though they have quite different purposes: Frank completes his monumental biography of Dostoevsky, while Scanlan examines the Russian writer's philosophical thought. Scanlan (emeritus, philosophy, Ohio State Univ.) argues that while much has been said about Dostoevsky as a writer, he has rarely been treated as a philosopher. Yet through his writings, he explored a variety of philosophical issues, primarily concerning the nature of humankind. Scanlan studies Dostoevsky's nationalism, opposition to rational egotism, and beliefs about our eternal souls, moral agency, and aesthetic needs. Of course, Dostoevsky's philosophy was framed within a Christian worldview, and Scanlan does excellent work discussing Dostoevsky's ideas in terms of his religious faith. Readers wanting to learn more about the thought of one of Russia's great writers will find this work essential. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This is the third in a projected five-volume literary biography of Dostoevsky. The first two volumes ( LJ 9/1/76; 11/15/83) have been widely acclaimed; the present volume, which covers Dostoevsky's return to Petersburg and the resumption of his literary activities following his exile in Siberia, is no less an achievement. It is to Frank's credit that he has analyzed so carefully these formative years, usually neglected by scholars, and produced this gracefully written volume of intellectual history. It is a work of vast erudition and of absorbing interest that can hardly be recommended too highly. Essential for all major collections. Joyce S. Toomre, Russian Research Ctr., Harvard Univ.

Donald Fanger - The Boston Globe

The first and last thing to say about Joseph Frank's ongoing enterprise... is that it is unrivaled in both its ambition and achievement. This is simply the most reliable, detailed, balanced and up to date account we have of the most influential novelist of the last 150 years. It is also the most fascinating... the present volume tells the story of transformation. There is hardly a more dramatic one to be found anywhere.

Robin Feuer Miller - Philadelphia Inquirer