"This highly original book examines Dostoevsky's complex, multifaceted, and self-contradictory representations of selfhood as he tried to strike a balance between a fully autonomous, isolated self, and a self that is wholly dependent upon others." — Kate Holland, author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre after the Great ReformsReviewed in the TLS, October 2018"Over seven cogently argued chapters, Corrigan traces Dostoevsky’s exploration of the human mystery solely through the fiction and its attendant notebooks, which he quarries to excellent effect. In so doing, he leads us from an extended analysis of one of Dostoevsky’s earliest and least celebrated works, “A Weak Heart” (the moving tale of a lowly civil servant’s inability “to withstand his own happiness”), all the way to The Brothers Karwnazov, unearthing a consistent picture of the damaged human subject through recurring patterns that Corrigan appears to have been the first to notice. The methodology, too, is innovative: rather than centring his study on the mid-period masterpieces Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment, Corrigan uses them as “touch stones” by which to test this continuity. If one ends the book itching to relate Corrigan’s findings back to Dostoevsky himself, his life and his eventual views on God and nation, that is merely testimony to their explanatory force (Dostoevsky’s novels, not incidentally, have a similar effect). [...] Yuri Corrigan has written a stunning companion to one of the great literary edifices. Like the novels themselves, and like the towering enclosed courtyards of St Petersburg that Dostoevsky knew so well, his monograph is narrow but deep. [...] Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self is eloquent testimony to the flourishing of North American scholarship on Russian nineteenth-century literature over the past several decades, and proof that the tradition has been successfully passed on to the youngest generation represented by Corrigan and his peers, many of them published in this same series from Northwestern University Press."

"This highly original book examines Dostoevsky's complex, multifaceted, and self-contradictory representations of selfhood as he tried to strike a balance between a fully autonomous, isolated self, and a self that is wholly dependent upon others." — Kate Holland, author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre after the Great ReformsReviewed in the TLS, October 2018"Over seven cogently argued chapters, Corrigan traces Dostoevsky’s exploration of the human mystery solely through the fiction and its attendant notebooks, which he quarries to excellent effect. In so doing, he leads us from an extended analysis of one of Dostoevsky’s earliest and least celebrated works, “A Weak Heart” (the moving tale of a lowly civil servant’s inability “to withstand his own happiness”), all the way to The Brothers Karwnazov, unearthing a consistent picture of the damaged human subject through recurring patterns that Corrigan appears to have been the first to notice. The methodology, too, is innovative: rather than centring his study on the mid-period masterpieces Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment, Corrigan uses them as “touch stones” by which to test this continuity. If one ends the book itching to relate Corrigan’s findings back to Dostoevsky himself, his life and his eventual views on God and nation, that is merely testimony to their explanatory force (Dostoevsky’s novels, not incidentally, have a similar effect). [...] Yuri Corrigan has written a stunning companion to one of the great literary edifices. Like the novels themselves, and like the towering enclosed courtyards of St Petersburg that Dostoevsky knew so well, his monograph is narrow but deep. [...] Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self is eloquent testimony to the flourishing of North American scholarship on Russian nineteenth-century literature over the past several decades, and proof that the tradition has been successfully passed on to the youngest generation represented by Corrigan and his peers, many of them published in this same series from Northwestern University Press."

"This highly original book examines Dostoevsky's complex, multifaceted, and self-contradictory representations of selfhood as he tried to strike a balance between a fully autonomous, isolated self, and a self that is wholly dependent upon others." — Kate Holland, author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre after the Great ReformsReviewed in the TLS, October 2018"Over seven cogently argued chapters, Corrigan traces Dostoevsky’s exploration of the human mystery solely through the fiction and its attendant notebooks, which he quarries to excellent effect. In so doing, he leads us from an extended analysis of one of Dostoevsky’s earliest and least celebrated works, “A Weak Heart” (the moving tale of a lowly civil servant’s inability “to withstand his own happiness”), all the way to The Brothers Karwnazov, unearthing a consistent picture of the damaged human subject through recurring patterns that Corrigan appears to have been the first to notice. The methodology, too, is innovative: rather than centring his study on the mid-period masterpieces Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment, Corrigan uses them as “touch stones” by which to test this continuity. If one ends the book itching to relate Corrigan’s findings back to Dostoevsky himself, his life and his eventual views on God and nation, that is merely testimony to their explanatory force (Dostoevsky’s novels, not incidentally, have a similar effect). [...] Yuri Corrigan has written a stunning companion to one of the great literary edifices. Like the novels themselves, and like the towering enclosed courtyards of St Petersburg that Dostoevsky knew so well, his monograph is narrow but deep. [...] Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self is eloquent testimony to the flourishing of North American scholarship on Russian nineteenth-century literature over the past several decades, and proof that the tradition has been successfully passed on to the youngest generation represented by Corrigan and his peers, many of them published in this same series from Northwestern University Press."