The Brothers Karamazov

A huge novel that is also a murder case, a family drama and an argument about God. The murder lands about halfway, and the trial takes the last fifth. The famous Grand Inquisitor chapter and the elder's teaching are the heart of it. I read parts of it in full and sampled the rest, so treat my score as a draft: four and a half out of five. Read it if: you want a classic that is also a murder trial; you like arguments about faith, doubt and guilt told through people, not lectures; you have time: it is about 350,000 words in this translation. Skip it if: you want a fast mystery: the murder is only half the book; long philosophical conversations lose you; many-named russian casts put you off (our characters page keeps them straight).

Our ending explained covers the final chapters in full, with spoilers. The Brothers Karamazov ending explained: who killed Fyodor, Smerdyakov's confession, Mitya's verdict, Ivan's fever and the last scene. Full spoilers. The Brothers Karamazov Ending Explained →

The Brothers Karamazov summary, book by book: the family, the Grand Inquisitor, the murder, the trial and the epilogue, with my own counts. Full spoilers. The Brothers Karamazov Summary: Twelve Books, One Murder →

Three brothers, Dmitri (Mitya), Ivan and Alexey (Alyosha), and their selfish father Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov in a Russian provincial town. A family quarrel, a rivalry over the same woman, and a murder lead to a trial, while the novel argues about faith, doubt and guilt.

By our count the Project Gutenberg text (ebook 28054, Constance Garnett's translation) is about 350,000 words. It has twelve books and an epilogue in four parts, 96 chapters in all.

Dmitri, called Mitya, is 27 and a hot-tempered former army officer. Ivan is 24 and the intellectual. Alexey, called Alyosha, is 20 and a novice at the local monastery. They are Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov's sons by two marriages.

The father Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov and his sons Dmitri (Mitya), Ivan and Alexey (Alyosha); the servant Smerdyakov; the elder Father Zossima; Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna, the two women in Mitya's life; Lise Hohlakov; and the schoolboys Ilusha and Kolya Krassotkin.

About halfway through. By our count it comes at roughly 51 percent of the text, in book eight, and the trial does not begin until about 84 percent. The rest of the novel is the family before it and the fallout after.