Rowan Williams

Master of Magdalene College University of Cambridge Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams explores the intricacies of speech, fiction, metaphor, and iconography in the works of one of literature's most complex, and most complexly misunderstood, authors. Williams' investigation focuses on the four major novels of Dostoevsky's maturity (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils, and The Brothers Karamozov). He argues that understanding Dostoevsky's style and goals as a writer of fiction is inseparable from understanding his religious commitments. Any reader who enters the rich and insightful world of Williams' Dostoevsky will emerge a more thoughtful and appreciative reader for it.

Language, Faith and Fiction

Dostoevsky

Nathan Griffin

"[Dostoevsky] wants us to choose that humanity will survive - not merely as a biological but a cultural reality. And the culture he identifies as human is one in which we do not have to lie about what we are in relationship to our environment; a culture that insists upon a recognition of mortality and fallibility, of limit, of mutual indebtedness for our nurture and psychological growth, of the inaccessibility of our souls to one another and of the gratuitous and creative nature of what we say to one another. His fictions tell us, with intensifying urgency, that this culture is more at risk than we might have thought, that the restless concerns of secular and instrumentalist thinking are fast eroding it, so that we may wake up and discover we no longer know how to respond with either respect or compassion to each other, and so have literally nothing to say"

This is a dense book and a parts of it went way over my head, but really does a fantastic job of getting to the core of why Dostoevsky's ideas will always be relevant.

Dostoevsky Language, Faith and Fiction

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