4 ms·

House of the Dead and The Gambler are both highly underrated in my opinion.

• dang 3y ago
  House of the Dead was Tolstoy's favorite and it it was on his bedside table when he died. The Gambler has a hell of a backstory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152240. The book itself was one enormous real-life gamble, which he won by a hair. Since gambling was Dostoevsky's own addiction, the intensity in the book has a personal quality. Also fabulous is The Double, which was the second thing he published, and still one of his best.
  • StanislavPetrov 3y ago
    >House of the Dead was Tolstoy's favorite and it it was on his bedside table when he died. Very interesting, never heard that, but I'm not surprised! Incredibly raw depiction of human nature. Much less verbiage than his other works but very profound. >Also fabulous is The Double, which was the second thing he published, and still one of his best. Flabbergasted I haven't read this yet. Got a copy on they way, thanks for the heads up!
    • dang 3y ago
      Oh wow, I convinced someone to read The Double! or at least to order it. Since you like his other novels I should warn you that it's unlike those - it's a cross between later Dostoevsky and Gogol, as well as a late variation on the doppelganger trope. It's tragicomic but hilarious. It shows its influences but it also shows D's unmistakeable qualities. The social-literary critics of the time threw D into the literary doghouse for it. But it was the one book of his that Nabokov loved. I know whose good opinion I'd rather have!