Fyodor Dostoevsky has 13 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 21 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 267 ratings. The most-rated is Crime and Punishment (Recorded Books Edition).
Crime and Punishment (Recorded Books Edition)
Summary
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is universally regarded as one of literature's finest achievements, as the great Russian novelist explores the inner workings of a troubled intellectual. Raskolnikov, a nihilistic young man in the midst of a spiritual crisis, makes the fateful decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker, justifying his actions by relying on science and reason, and creating his own morality system. Dehumanized yet sympathetic, exhausted yet hopeful, Raskolnikov represents the best and worst elements of modern intellectualism. The aftermath of his crime and Petrovich's murder investigation result in an utterly compelling, truly unforgettable cat-and-mouse game. This stunning dramatization of Dostoevsky's magnum opus brings the slums of St. Petersburg and the demons of Raskolnikov's tortured mind vividly to life.
Public Domain (P)1991 by Recorded Books, Inc.
Devils
Summary
Exiled to four years in Siberia, but hailed by the end of his life as a saint, prophet, and genius, Fyodor Dostoevsky holds an exalted place among the best of the great Russian authors. One of Dostoevsky’s five major novels, Devils follows the travails of a small provincial town beset by a band of modish radicals - and in so doing presents a devastating depiction of life and politics in late 19th-century Imperial Russia. Both a grotesque comedy and a shocking illustration of clashing ideologies, Dostoevsky’s famed novel stands as an undeniable masterpiece.
©1992 Michael R. Katz (P)2013 Recorded Books
The Idiot
Summary
One of the most influential authors from Russia’s Golden Age, Fyodor Dostoevsky left behind a vast collection of prized literary works, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin possesses a childlike innocence and trusting nature that leave him vulnerable to abuse by those around him. Returning to St. Petersburg to collect an inheritance, Myshkin realizes he is a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, manipulation and power.
Public Domain (P)2014 Recorded Books
![Cover art for The Idiot [Blackstone]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41XO98tJ7HL._SL500_.jpg)
The Idiot [Blackstone]
Summary
Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life - abject poverty, incessant gambling, and the death of his firstborn child - Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, The Idiot, just two years after completing Crime and Punishment. In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."
©2000 Blackstone Audiobooks. Originally published in 1880 in Russia.
Crime and Punishment
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Don Warrington, known for his roles in Death in Paradise and The Five as well as his multiple Shakespearean performances. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Oliver Ready. Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 2014. This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's 'psychological record of a crime' gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders alone through the slums of St. Petersburg, deliriously imagining himself above society's laws. But when he commits a random murder, only suffering ensues. Embarking on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow and made his name in 1846 with the novella Poor Folk. He spent several years in prison in Siberia as a result of his political activities, an experience which formed the basis of The House of the Dead. In later life, he fell in love with a much younger woman and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. His subsequent great novels include Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. Oliver Ready is Research Fellow in Russian Society and Culture at St Antony's College, Oxford. He is general editor of the anthology, The Ties of Blood: Russian Literature from the 21st Century (2008) and Consultant Editor for Russia, Central and Eastern Europe at the Times Literary Supplement. Translation Copyright: Oliver Ready 2014.
Public Domain (P)2020 Penguin Audio
![Cover art for The Brothers Karamazov [Jimcin Recordings Edition]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51bzNML+tML._SL500_.jpg)
The Brothers Karamazov [Jimcin Recordings Edition]
Summary
Dostoevsky studied human nature with passion and precision. He plumbed the depths and never winced at what he found, even when it was beyond his understanding. This extraordinary novel is a recital of his findings, told in the story of four brothers: Dimitri, pleasure-seeking, impatient, unruly; Ivan, brilliant and morose; Alyosha, gentle, loving, honest; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, sly, silent, cruel. What gives this story its dramatic grip is the part these brothers play in their father's murder.
©1987 Jimcin Recordings
Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics)
Summary
"Pevear and Volokhonsky may be the premier Russian-to-English translators of the era." (The New Yorker) Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between 19th- and 20th-century fiction and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original. This audio edition of Notes from Underground is the only recording of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation of Dostoevsky’s classic work. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s masterful translation of Notes from Underground is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English. This audiobook is skillfully narrated by Peter Batchelor.
©1993 Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (P)2020 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC
Poor People
Summary
This gloomy book is written in the form of letters exchanged between two cousins, Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova, who live on the same street in a shockingly deprived part of St. Petersburg Russia. Makar is a lowly clerk, who is being bullied at work and lives in the screened-off corner of someone else's kitchen and Varvara has taken in sewing as a means of avoiding falling into prostitution to make money. Their friendship is touching and sentimental, but it begins to suffer. Will they find their way out of poverty, either by marriage or other means? Will their friendship recover, or will money eventually come between them? This novel deals with themes of extreme poverty and marginalization, and was originally written to raise funds to pay off Dostoevsky's mounting gambling debts, when money was very much on his mind.
Public Domain (P)2017 A.R.N. Publications
The Brothers Karamazov
Summary
The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and is generally considered the culmination of his life's work. Published in November 1880, Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing the novel set in 19th-century Russia. Fydor Karamazov, a mean and disreputable landowner, has three sons, Dmitry, a profligate army officer; Ivan, a writer with revolutionary ideas; and Alexey, a religious novice. A drama of patricide and fraternal jealousy unfolds, involving the questions of anarchism and atheism, and giving a portrait of Russian society in the turbulent 1870s. Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (1821 - 1881) was a Russian fiction writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works have been acclaimed all over the world by thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. Please note: This is a vintage recording. The audio quality may not be up to modern day standards. Translated by David Magarshack
Public Domain (P)2009 RNIB
The Double and The Gambler
Summary
The Double, written in Dostoevsky's youth, was a sharp turn away from the realism of his first novel, Poor Folk. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelgänger - a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him with his friends and colleagues. In the dilemma of this increasingly paranoid hero, Dostoevsky makes vividly concrete the inner disintegration of consciousness that would become a major theme of his work. The Gambler was written 20 years later, under the pressure of crushing debt. It is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky - who once gambled away his young wife's wedding ring - knew intimately from his own experience. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of his character, Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character. The two strikingly original short novels brought together here - in new translations by award-winning translators - were both literary gambles of a sort for Dostoevsky.
©2005 Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (P)2019 Tantor
Crime and Punishment
Summary
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Pevear and Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's classic novel that presents a clear insight into this astounding psychological thriller. "The best (translation) currently available." (Washington Post Book World) This audio edition of Crime and Punishment is expressively brought to life by Peter Batchelor.
©1992 Translation Copyright by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (P)2020 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC
The Fyodor Dostoevsky BBC Radio Drama Collection
Summary
BBC radio productions of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, plus selected shorter fiction and bonus programmes exploring his life and work. One of the most important and influential Russian writers of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky is admired worldwide for his great realist novels, exploring questions of morality, philosophy and the nature of existence. This compilation contains the BBC radio productions of his four most famous novels - as well as three lesser-known works and two bonus documentaries - collected together for the first time. Crime and Punishment - When he tests out a horrific theory, young Raskolnikov finds himself pursued by the cunning Investigator Porfiry Petrovich. This thrilling tale of guilt and redemption stars Barnaby Kay and Jim Norton. The Idiot - Arriving back in Russia after years spent abroad treating his epilepsy, Prince Mishkin learns the story of the woman who will dominate his life - the spoilt but captivating Nastasya.... Dostoevsky's most personal novel stars Paul Rhys, Roger Allam and Lia Williams. Devils - Idealism curdles into murderous anarchy in this fresh, contemporary three-part adaptation of Dostoevsky's terrifying masterpiece, starring Gary Lilburn, Jane Whittenshaw, Joseph Arkley and Jonathan Forbes. The Brothers Karamazov - The Karamazov family reunite for a meeting with their father to discuss Dmitry's inheritance. But the unpredictable Fyodor seems unwilling to play the game.... Stars Roy Marsden, Paul Hilton and Nicholas Boulton. The Friend of the Family - Russia, 1859 and the manor of Stephanchikovo is thrown into chaos when a former sergeant sets himself up as an arbiter of morals and taste. David Suchet and Clive Merrison star in this farcical comedy. 'Bobok' - Loitering in the cemetery after a funeral, a drunken writer overhears the conversations of the recently deceased corpses.... This blackly comic short story is performed by Boris Isarov. 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man' - A study in music and words of Dostoevsky's vision of an idyllic, prelapsarian world. Read by Ronald Pickup. Dostoevsky and Dangerous Ideas - John Gray reflects on the lessons Dostoevsky's novels teach us about the perils of misguided idealism. Dr Rowan Williams on Dostoevsky - The onetime Archbishop of Canterbury joins Susan Hitch to consider conflicting ideas about spiritual regeneration and existentialism, as embodied in Dostoevsky's characters. First published 1859 (The Friend of the Family), 1866 (Crime and Punishment), 1869 (The Idiot), 1872 (Demons), 1873 ('Bobok'), 1877 ('The Dream of a Ridiculous Man'), 1880 (The Brothers Karamazov).
©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
The Adolescent
Summary
The narrator and protagonist of Dostoevsky's novel The Adolescent (first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father's wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and armed with a mysterious document that he believes gives him power over others. This new English version by the most acclaimed of Dostoevsky's translators is a masterpiece of pathos and high comedy.
©2013 Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (P)2019 Tantor