Dostoevsky and the Novel

By Michael Holquist,

Book cover of Dostoevsky and the Novel

Book description

What place do Dostoevsky's works occupy in the history of the novel? To answer this question, Michael Holquist focuses on the formal aspects of Dostoevskian narrative.

The author argues that the novel is a genre that constantly seeks its own identity: we still do not know what it is, since…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Dostoevsky and the Novel as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Of the very many books I have read about Dostoevsky, this is one of the best, and I return to the author’s ideas again and again. Holquist argues that “Dostoevsky is the inheritor of a particular historical tradition—a tradition of radical doubt about history itself.”

His readings of Dostoevsky’s individual works show how Dostoevsky responded to this challenge, and are brilliant, theoretically sophisticated yet clear and convincingly argued. 

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