Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume "Dostoevsky" is widely recognized as t
he best biography of the writer in any language--and one of the greatest literar
y biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work h
as been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume
with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's accl
aimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and li
terary criticism, "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" illuminates the writer's wo
rks--from his first novel "Poor Folk" to "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brother
s Karamazov"--by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideol
ogical context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural his
tory of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in
which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.
