Book of a lifetime: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

From The Independent archive: Richard T Kelly reflects on the Russian master’s ragged portrait of religion, madness and parricide

Kafka judged it correctly in arguing that Dostoevsky’s characters are not all lunatics – just ‘incidentally mad’, like the rest of us (Getty)

The Brothers Karamazov has been my friend since I was 18 and first read David Magarshack’s 1958 translation. Then, as now, it struck me as the grandest, richest and strangest of Dostoevsky’s four “big” novels.

True, bookish teenagers can be overly partial to “sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes” (Nabokov’s high-nosed dismissal of Dostoevsky), and there’s no denying the delirious melodrama in these books. But having lived with Karamazov for 20-odd years, I am certain Kafka judged it correctly in arguing that Dostoevsky’s characters are not all lunatics – just “incidentally mad”, like the rest of us.

Karamazov is a tale of parricide: three disparate siblings with a kindred urge to do in their dissolute father. Some argue that to create those brothers Dostoevsky “merely” split himself three ways. I’d say that the point is that he contained sufficient multitudes to do so.