Raskolnikov commits murder. He then must deal both with the police, and his own guilty conscience. Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excrutiating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost...

Presents the working out of the parallel moral and religious dilemmas of Anna Karenina with her soldier-lover, Vronsky, and Konstantin Levin with his young, very loving wife, Kitty.

The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, a talented student, devises a theory about extraordinary men being above the law, since in their brilliance they think "new thoughts" and so contribute to society. He then sets out to prove his theory by murdering a vile, cynical old pawnbroker and her sister. The act brings Raskolnikov into contact with his own buried conscience and with two characters--the deeply religious Sonia, who has endured great suffering,...

Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive Prince Myshkin - known as 'the idiot' - pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail,...