40 h 1 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 40 h 1 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A father is murdered, and three brothers face questions no verdict can settle.
In a provincial Russian town, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov turns family life into a battle over money, desire and old wounds. His son Dmitri wants his inheritance and loves Grushenka, the woman his father also pursues. When Fyodor is found murdered, suspicion pulls the brothers into a search for truth.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky makes ideas as urgent as the crime. Dmitri follows passion, Ivan challenges belief in a world of suffering, and Alyosha seeks a life of faith and active love. Their arguments reach beyond who commits a crime to what people owe one another.
What you’ll discover
- A family at war Enter quarrels where inheritance, wounded pride and desire make every encounter feel ready to break.
- Three ways to live Follow brothers whose conflicting choices give passion, reason and faith a vivid human face.
- The burden of freedom Encounter Ivan's imagined Grand Inquisitor and unsettling questions about freedom, belief and human need.
- Love put to work Meet Father Zosima, whose teachings ask what responsibility for other people means in daily life.
- Guilt beyond the courtroom Feel the tension between the search for a murderer and the harder question of shared responsibility.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy family dramas built around a crime, big arguments about God and freedom, and characters who quarrel and confess with burning honesty.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A father who forgets his own sons
- The family meeting becomes a public scandal
- Dmitri confesses his passions and his debt
- A servant's quiet mind grows in the shadows
- Ivan asks why children must suffer
- Zossima teaches that everyone answers for everyone
- Mitya chases money and then a woman
- Each brother carries a share of the guilt
- Alyosha answers argument with acts of love
- A comic narrator holds tragedy and trial together
Who’s who
- Alyosha KaramazovThe youngest brother, a kind novice who loves everyone and is sent by his dying elder back into the world and his family's troubles.
- Dmitri KaramazovThe eldest son, a passionate former officer who feels cheated by his father and is torn between two women and his own sense of honor.
- Ivan KaramazovThe middle brother, a proud, brilliant thinker who doubts God and justice and hides a tormented heart behind sharp argument.
- Fyodor Pavlovitch KaramazovThe father, a greedy and sentimental buffoon who neglects his sons and competes with Dmitri for the same woman.
- SmerdyakovThe family's epileptic cook, said to be the old man's illegitimate son, who watches everyone closely and resents his place.
- Elder ZossimaA gentle old monk who teaches that each person is responsible for all, and whom Alyosha loves above everyone.
- GrushenkaA beautiful, wilful young woman of the town whom both father and eldest son desire, and who waits for an old lover.
- Katerina IvanovnaDmitri's proud and generous fiancée, who wants to save him from himself and is bound to him by debt and pride.
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The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 1880
Three brothers, a hated father and a woman named Grushenka collide in a Russian town before a killing.
ChallengingOver 20 hours to readDeutsch
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In short
Why would a young man in a monk's robe leave his monastery, on his teacher's order, and walk straight into the middle of his family's hatred? The Brothers Karamazov follows Alyosha, the youngest of three brothers, into a town where his drunken father and hot-headed brother Dmitri compete for the same woman, Grushenka.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A father who forgets his own sons
Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov is a landowner who hardly ever visits his own land. He is vicious, sentimental and shrewd with money, and foolish about almost everything else. The narrator, a local man who knew him, calls him a common type, and he does not mean it as a compliment.
He marries twice, and each time he weeps in public and then forgets the children. Other people raise the boys. Grigory, a loyal servant, looks after Mitya, and a generous nobleman pays for the younger two to go to school.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1880
- Language
- Deutsch
- Reading time
- 26 h 5 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-brothers-karamazov.
Dostoyevsky, F. (2026). The brothers Karamazov. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-brothers-karamazov (Original work published 1880)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-brothers-karamazov.
@book{dostoyevsky2026brothers,
author = {Dostoyevsky, Fyodor},
title = {The Brothers Karamazov},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-brothers-karamazov},
note = {First published 1880}
}
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What is The Brothers Karamazov about?
It is about three brothers and their father, whose quarrel over money and a woman leads to a murder and a trial. Around that crime, the novel debates faith, freedom, doubt and responsibility.
Who are the Karamazov brothers?
Dmitri, called Mitya, is the passionate eldest. Ivan is the proud, intellectual middle son who doubts God. Alyosha, the youngest, is a kind novice. A servant, Smerdyakov, is widely thought to be their father's illegitimate son.
What is the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov?
It is a prose poem Ivan tells Alyosha. Christ returns to earth, and an old churchman says people cannot bear freedom and need miracle, mystery and authority. It is the novel's sharpest challenge to faith.
The author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–1881 · Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist born in Moscow in 1821. He lived in Saint Petersburg and spent years in Siberia after his arrest in 1849. He wrote Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868–1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880). He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.
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