The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ

The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

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The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ
  • The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ
The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
$17.95
$17.95

Book Overview

A blustering interloper and a meek aristocrat struggle for control of a country estate, in this comic novel by the author of Crime and Punishment.

"Avsey's excellent translation and stimulating introduction and notes enable the reader to appreciate this novel, and its weird humour, to the full." -- Telegraph

Full of pace, effervescence and grotesque comedy, this short novel by the renowned author of Crime and Punishment represents an antic mode insufficiently known to English readers, and presented here in the first translation since Constance Garnett's version of the 1920s.

Set on a remote country estate, the story concerns a household completely under the sway of the despotic charlatan and humbug Foma Fomich Opiskin, one of the most notorious creations in Russian literature. The owner of the estate, Colonel Rostanev, a meek, soft-hearted giant of a man, is cruelly dominated by Opiskin. With deftly controlled suspense amid a teeming variety of wildly eccentric minor characters, the novel builds up to a confrontation between these two. Will Rostanev give way to Opiskin's cruelty and sacrifice the love of his life? Or will his sense of honor finally push him to resist the tyrant's demands?

Written in the year of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's return to St Petersburg after his exile, it is perhaps his most important early work. It is the link between Gogol and Chekhov; it is almost Dickensian in its comic proliferation of imaginative characters. In the chaos which spreads out from the roiling center of the dominant Opiskin, Dostoevsky draws a picture of a Russia on the verge of upheaval and transformation.
ISBN9781805331650
Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
PublisherPushkin Press Classics
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedMay 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages304
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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Classics Fiction

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More by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ

The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

About Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81) was educated in Moscow and at the School of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg, where he spent four years. In 1846, he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk; it was an immediate critical and popular success. This was followed by short stories and the novel The Double. While at work on Netochka Nezvanova, the twenty-seven-year-old author was arrested for belonging to a young socialist group. He was tried and condemned to death, but at the last moment his sentence was commuted to prison in Siberia. He spent four years in the penal settlement as Omsk. In 1859, he was granted full amnesty and allowed to return to St. Petersburg. In the fourteen years before his death, Dostoyevsky produced his greatest works, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. The last was published a year before his death.

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