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Loading... The Gambler/Bobok/A Nasty Storyby Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A deep view into the mind of the mentally deranged and obsessed. No other writer I know of comes close in reflecting the imagery of the shadow world of the mad and insane. ( ) Published in 1862 in the Dostoevsky brothers’ journal Time, A Nasty Story is one of Dostoevsky’s shorter, funnier and crueller comedies. Actual State Councillor Ivan Ilyich Pralinsky is on his way home somewhat the worse for drink after a small birthday party with some of his colleagues, when he passes by the house of one of his subordinates. A wedding is in progress in the house, and he remembers that his subordinate, an unassuming, beaverish man named Pseldonimov, is getting married there. Pralinsky decides to gatecrash the wedding, to scatter his largesse among the crowd and then leave in glory. It all goes horribly wrong, in a series of absolutely toe-curling solecisms, terrible even by Dostoevskyan standards... Read the full review on The Lectern: http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/04/nasty-story-dostoevsky.html no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesPenguin Classics (L179) Contains
The stories in this volume demonstrate Dostoyevsky's genius for fusing caricature, irony and the grotesque to create a powerful dark humour. The Gambler is a breathtaking portrayal of an intense and futile obsession. Based on Dostoyevsky's own experience of financial desperation and the compulsive desire to win money, it focuses on the characters that take their places at the gaming tables of 'Roulettenburg'- the outspoken, aristocratic 'Grandmamma', the mercenary Mademoiselle Blanche, the cool, mysterious Polina and Alex, the author's self-portrait; a man gripped by exhilaration and hopelessness. Bobok is a blackly comic satire in which a desolate writer becomes drawn into the conversations of the dead, and A Nasty Story is a humorous look at the disparity between a man's exaggerated ideal of himself and the sad reality. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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