The Novel in the Age of Disintegration

Scholars have long been fascinated by the creative struggles with genre manifested throughout Dostoevskys career. In The Novel in the Age of Disintegration, Kate Holland brings historical context to bear, showing that Dostoevsky wanted to use the form of the novel as a means of depicting disintegration brought on by various crises in Russian society in the 1860s. This required him to reinvent the genre. At the same time he sought to infuse his novels with the capacity to inspire belief in social and spiritual reintegration, so he returned to some older conventions of a society that was already becoming outmoded. In thoughtful readings of Demons, The Adolescent, A Writers Diary,and The Brothers Karamazov, Holland delineates Dostoevskys struggle to adapt a genre to the reality of the present, with all its upheavals, while maintaining a utopian vision of Russias future mission.