BLOG POSTS

‘The idea is to depict an absolutely wonderful person.’ (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1867) Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ The Idiot is the novel in which Dostoevsky attempted the difficult experiment of creating a central character who embodied goodness. Sally Minogue looks at the resulting fiction.  The Idiot (1869) was the first of the big Russian novels that I… Read More

‘The great drama of his life was the struggle for a better state of things in Russia.’ (Henry James on Ivan Turgenev) The publication of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862) caused an unprecedented sensation in Russia. Sally Minogue has a look at its contemporary context, and at the novel as we might read it today. … Read More