Fyodor Dostoevsky

“A spiteful, isolated former clerk in Petersburg rails against reason, progress and the 'crystal palace' of the future, then tells the story of a farewell dinner, a night in a brothel, and the young woman whose kindness he could not bear.”

“A poor student in St. Petersburg murders a pawnbroker to prove he is above ordinary morality, and finds he cannot live with what he has done.”

“Prince Myshkin, a gentle, epileptic young man returning to Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, is caught between two women — the proud, wounded Nastasya Filippovna and the general's daughter Aglaya — and between the passions of Petersburg society, where his goodness is taken for idiocy.”

“In a sleepy provincial town, an ageing liberal idealist watches his son organise a circle of conspirators around the magnetic, empty figure of Nikolai Stavrogin — until intrigue, arson and murder show what the fashionable ideas of the fathers have produced in the sons.”

“In a small Russian town, a dissolute old landowner is murdered, and suspicion falls on his passionate eldest son — while his two other sons, the brilliant sceptic Ivan and the gentle novice Alyosha, are drawn into a struggle over guilt, faith, freedom and love.”