The Insulted and Injured [Hardcover]

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 1975 | ISBN-10: 0837182484 | ISBN-13: 978-0837182483

1915. Dostoevsky, Russian novelist, is considered one of the most outstanding and influential writers of modern literature. In The Insulted and Injured he first explores one of his major themes, the beneficial effects of suffering. The novel begins: Last year, on the evening of March 22, I had a very strange adventure. All that day I had been walking about the town trying to find a lodging. My old one was very damp, and I had begun to have an ominous cough. Ever since the autumn I had been meaning to move, but I had hung on till the spring. I had not been able to find anything decent all day. In the first place I wanted a separate tenement, not a room in other people's lodgings; secondly, though I could do with one room, it must be a large one, and, of course, it had at the same time to be as cheap as possible. I have observed that in a confined space even thought is cramped. When I was brooding over a future novel I liked to walk up and down the room. By the way, I always like better brooding over my works and dreaming how they should be written than actually writing them. And this really is not from laziness. Why is it? See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 333 pages
• Publisher: Greenwood Press Reprint (October 10, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0837182484
• ISBN-13: 978-0837182483
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,378,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving tale of suffering and forgiveness, May 19, 2000

By 

"mikeu3" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Insulted and Injured (Hardcover)

It's really a shame that The Insulted and Injured is as hard to find as it is; though it's not on as grand a scale as most of Dostoevsky's better known novels, it may be as touching as anything he wrote. Narrated by a young author, Vanya, who has just released his first novel (which bears an obvious resemblance to Dostoevsky's own first novel, Poor Folk, making me wonder how much of the story might be autobiographical), it consists of two gradually converging subplots. One deals with Vanya's close friend and former love object, Natasha, who has left her family to live with her new lover, Alyosha. Alyosha is the saintly but dimwitted son of Prince Valkovsky, who hopes to gain financially by marrying Alyosha off to an heiress, Katya. Valkovsky's cruel machinations to break up Alyosha and Natasha make him one of the most memorable "predatory types" (a la Stavrogin in The Possessed) that Dostoevsky created. The other branch of the plot deals with the approximately 13-year old orphan Nellie, whom Vanya saves from an abusive household by taking her into his apartment, and whose deceased mother's story in some ways parallels that of Natasha. It's unusual to see a well-developed character as young as Nellie in a Dostoevsky novel, but Nellie may be one of his most moving creations, and she in particular shows the influence of Dickens (whom Dostoevsky is known to have read during the Siberian exile near the end of which this novel was conceived).

The Insulted and Injured could justly be criticized for melodrama, as the characters' behavior is a bit too extreme to be believed. There's not even a hint of jealousy anywhere in the love quadrilateral between Vanya, Natasha, Alyosha, and Katya, as none of them want anything other than the happiness of their beloved--whether that happiness is with someone else is utterly (and unrealistically) immaterial to them. Also, at the other end of the spectrum, Prince Valkovsky is rather implausibly evil, especially toward his own son, who though not exactly brilliant has done nothing to justify Valkovsky's cruelty. However, these extreme charcters make the novel very emotionally involving and didn't realy bother me while I was reading it, though of course your mileage may vary.

One of the most important themes throughout Dostoevsky's work is the expiative value of suffering, and The Insulted and Injured, with its tragically moving plot and characters, develops that theme splendidly. At this writing, unfortunately, Amazon lists it as unavailable; hopefully that will change soon. (Also, although at present the out-of-print search service isn't offered for this translation, it is available for a translation under the title "The Insulted and Humiliated," so you might try searching under that title.)

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Shocking editing for a reasonable text, November 27, 2005

By 

Gunter Grass - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Insulted and Injured (Paperback)

Disregarding the literary merits of Dostoevsky's novel, the editing of this book is dreadful, to say the least. From the bizarre blurb ("Vanya has a crush on Natasha"..."probably literally an homage to Dickens"..."Anyway, Vanya saves from an abusive household") the editors demonstrate a disconnected grasp of grammatical and linguistic structure, which disintegrates further throughout the text.

A typical example of this blatant lack of proofreading reads as follows:

"How is Natalya Nikolaevna? Is she at home I inquired of the anxious lady.

(The quotation never reaches a conclusion). Similarly, there are several instances of typographical punctuation errors ("I less than any,.") as well as a general lack of grammatical syntax.

For a so-called classic, the editors of this book have either lazily failed to do the text justice by omitting neccessary linguistic features, or the editing has in fact been completed by a panel of inebriated armadillos.