Product Description

Netochka Nezvanova - a ‘Nameless Nobody’ - tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, Efimov, a failed musician who believes he is a neglected genius. The young girl is strangely drawn to this drunken ruin of a man, who exploits her and drives the family to poverty. But when she is rescued by an aristocratic family, the abuse against Netochka’s delicate psyche continues in a more subtle way, condemning her to remain an outsider - a solitary spectator of a glittering society. Conceived as part of a novel on a grand scale, Netochka Nezvanova remained incomplete after Dostoyevsky was exiled to Siberia for ‘revolutionary activities’ in 1849. With its depiction of the suffering, loneliness, madness and sin that affect both rich and poor in St Petersburg, it contains the great themes that were to dominate his later novels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40503 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-29
• Original language: Russian
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Russian novelist, journalist, short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the human soul had a profound influence on the 20th century novel. Among his most famous works, Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-69), and The Possessed (1872). An epileptic all his life, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg on February 9 (New Style), 1881.

Customer Reviews

A real shame...
...that this outstanding work was never completed. Dostoyevsky was exiled for belonging to a revolutionary group before he managed to complete his first novel. The part that remains was to be the prologue to an extensive work along the lines of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'.

I shan't give away the plot, but suffice to say it involves murder (though not as violent as in 'Crime and Punishment'), family ties and loyalties and ruined genius.

A marvellous book.