The five Dostoevsky books on this site run from 1848 to 1880, and they fall into two groups: the early work before his arrest and exile, and the four great novels he wrote in the last sixteen years of his life.
White Nights, from 1848, belongs to the first group: a short, sentimental Petersburg story written before the decade of prison and army service that changed his politics and his prose. Notes from the Underground, from 1864, is the hinge, and it is the book that everything after it argues with.
The three big novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, are each built around a single act of violence or a single impossible person. They are long; the word counts below are the honest measure of the commitment.
Where to start
Crime and Punishment — the most readable of the big novels and the one that shows his method at full strength. If you want something shorter first, Notes from the Underground takes an evening and explains the rest.
Fyodor Dostoevsky in publication order
Numbered by first publication. Word counts and reading times are for the text on this site.
| # | Year | Title | Words | Reading time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1848 | White Nights | 118,526 | 6.6 h | 1848; an early Petersburg story. |
| 2 | 1864 | Notes from the Underground | 44,161 | 2.5 h | 1864; the hinge between the two halves of his career. |
| 3 | 1866 | Crime and Punishment | 204,000 | 11.3 h | 1866. |
| 4 | 1869 | The Idiot | 244,604 | 13.6 h | 1869. |
| 5 | 1880 | The Brothers Karamazov | 349,000 | 19.4 h | 1880; his last novel. |
How to read Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Publication order. White Nights, Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, 1848 to 1880.
- Shortest first. Notes from the Underground at about 44,000 words. Crime and Punishment is 204,000, The Idiot 245,000, and The Brothers Karamazov 349,000.
- The big three. Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, in that order. Each is a separate world and none requires the others.
Nothing here is a series. The one ordering that matters is the one inside each novel: read the three big books last, because they assume a reader who has already been through the shorter, stranger work.
Every title above has a page here with chapter summaries, the word count, reading time, and free EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s shelf · Philosophy classics · Longest classic novels — or go back to Fyodor Dostoevsky for the full shelf.