Dostoevsky

In a passionate and tender book Jones discusses the narrative techniques and linguistic subtleties of Dostoevsky's novels, what he calls "conspiracies between novelist and reader behind the back of the narrator and his narrative". His object is always to question orthodox readings in particular those of the editors of the current Soviet edition, and to lay bare "Dostoevsky's power to generate seemingly inexhaustable psychic energy in the form of his readers' diverse intellectual passions". This is a suggestive, unconventional, brilliantly "seen" yet rigorous exposition of one of the greatest and most "modern" of 19th-century novelists.