Fyodor Dostoevsky /

This is a short but engaging, stimulating, and informative study of Dostoevsky's major novels. Conradi provides a brief introduction and places the novels in their literary and political context. In this regard he draws on Joseph Frank's magisterial three-volume study of Dostoevsky (CH, Feb '77, May '84, Jan '87). He then proceeds to define his approach to the novels, which is in terms of comedy and according to which Dostoevsky yoked tragedy and comedy. But this "comic" approach is not consistently used in the study, and some of Conradi's definitions for comedy are vague for the author's real agenda is to provide us with much insight into Dostoevsky's world. Conradi thus makes many intelligent, cogent, and perceptive remarks about the characters and the salient ideological issues in Dostoevsky's works. The study is based exclusively on works published in English. Comparatists should note the absence in the bibliography of Donald Fanger's fine work on Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Dickens. Appropriate for lower-division undergraduates and community college students. -V. D. Barooshian, Wells College