Novel · 1861
The Humiliated and Insulted
Униженные и оскорблённые
A sprawling melodrama of St Petersburg’s poor, written right after his return from exile.
FD
Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821 – 1881 · Russia As an Amazon Associate, The Put’ earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
Ivan Petrovich, a young writer in St Petersburg, watches the people he loves get drawn into a web of scheming. His friend Natasha has left her family for the weak-willed Alyosha, whose father, the cynical Prince Valkovsky, wants him to make a profitable marriage. Alongside the love story runs another: that of a lonely, mistreated orphan girl, Nelly.
It was the first long novel Dostoevsky published after his return from exile in 1859. It is openly a melodrama — and you can feel him finding his way back into literature, with themes of pride, cruelty and forgiveness that he would deepen in the great novels to come.
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