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Synopsis

`Wil van den Bercken has produced a focused and sober reconsideration of the vexed question of the religious identity of Dostoevsky's fiction... In a series of patient and perceptive analyses of Dostoevsky's major novels, van den Bercken extracts their religious content and assesses it without preconceptions. Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky should appeal not only to specialists in Dostoevsky and modern fiction, but also to students and general readers.'---Robert Bird, The University of Chicago This study offers a literary analysis and theological evalution of the Christian themes in the five great novels of Dostoevsky-Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Adolescent, The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov. Based on a balanced method of literary analysis and theological evaluation of the texts, this study starts by discussing recent studies of Dostoevsky's religion. It then describes Dostoevsky's original literary method in dealing with religious issues - his use of paradoxes, contradictions and irony. Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky ultimately deconstructs Dostoevsky as an Orthodox writer, and reveals that the Christian themes in his novels are not ecclesiastical or confessionally theological ones, but instead are expressions of a fundamentally Christian anthropology and biblical ethics.