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.

作者介紹

約瑟夫•弗蘭剋（Joseph Frank，1918—2013） 普林斯頓大學比較文學榮譽教授，斯坦福大學比較文學和斯拉夫語語言文學榮譽教授。代錶作五捲本《陀思妥耶夫斯基》曾獲美國國傢圖書奬（傳記類），兩次（美國大學優秀學生聯誼會的）剋裏斯蒂安•高斯奬，兩次（現代語言協會的）詹姆斯•拉塞爾•洛厄爾奬，《洛杉磯時報》圖書奬以及另外一些榮譽。另著有《現代小說的空間形式》、《宗教與理性之間：俄國文學與文化隨筆》、《迴應現代性：文化政治隨筆》等。

譯者介紹

戴大洪 1982年畢業於北京工業學院（現北京理工大學）光學工程係。譯有《第三共和國的崩潰：1940年法國崩潰之研究》、《雷濛德•卡佛：一位作傢的一生》、《古拉格：一部曆史》。