Frank approaches Dostoevsky's tormented character with admirable restraint and perceptiveness, although he sidesteps the writer's cultish Russian nationalism. He had a famous row with the anti-Slavophile Turgenev, and he got his political point of view across in The Idiot's idealized portrait of a Russian Christian and in The Devils's depiction of fiendish Nihilist conspiracies. In exile in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, the homesick writer continued his compulsive gambling and his debate with Westerners and Nihilists.

To keep up this pace he hired a stenographer, Anna Snitkin, who quickly became his second wife the couple fled Russia to evade the financial demands of Dostoevsky's creditors and his brother's family. In a state of fiscal panic that would underlie his compositions for the rest of his career, Dostoevsky hurriedly wrote Crime and Punishment as a polemic against the radical younger generation's materialistic Nihilism (ably glossed by Frank), and The Gambler as a critique of his own mania for roulette.

This volume opens after the death of his brother, Mikhail, with Dostoevsky futilely attempting to singlehandedly edit and publish the journal they had founded, while also assuming Mikhail's debts and responsibility for his family. The fourth volume in the authoritative series launched with Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt (1976), encompassing the six incredible years during which Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and The Devils.

Frank dostoevsky