The young Sergei is summoned from St Petersburg by his uncle, the retired colonel Yegor Rostanev, to the remote country estate of Stepanchikovo. Rostanev's household, populated by a medley of remarkable characters, is dominated by the figure of Foma Opiskin, a devious, manipulative hanger-on who has everyone in thrall and plots to marry the colonel to the woman of his choice, Tatyana Ivanovna. When Opiskin finds that his plans are being thwarted, a confrontation with Rostanev ensues, and all hell is let loose.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer who had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. He is commonly regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived, penning classics that include: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. His ideas profoundly shaped literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology, and literary criticism.
