The Brothers Karamazov

Dostoevsky's final and most ambitious novel—a passionate philosophical drama about faith, doubt, and the nature of good and evil.

When the despicable patriarch Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, suspicion falls on his four sons: the sensualist Dmitri, tormented by his rivalry with his father over money and women; the intellectual Ivan, whose rational atheism leads him to conclude that "everything is permitted"; the spiritual Alyosha, a novice monk torn between worldly and divine love; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, servant and possible son, whose resentment runs deeper than anyone suspects.

This is far more than a murder mystery—it's Dostoevsky's attempt to address the fundamental questions of human existence. Through the three legitimate brothers, he explores three different responses to life's suffering: Dmitri represents the physical, sensual approach; Ivan embodies pure reason and intellectual rebellion against God; and Alyosha symbolizes faith and spiritual love.

The novel's centerpiece is Ivan's "Grand Inquisitor" parable, one of the most powerful critiques of organized religion ever written, in which Christ returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition only to be rejected by the Church that claims to serve him.

Dostoevsky weaves together multiple narrative threads: a courtroom drama, a spiritual journey, a family saga, and a philosophical treatise. The result is a work of staggering ambition that tackles nothing less than the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the possibility of moral behavior in an seemingly amoral universe.