Dostoevsky's Secrets

Reading Against the Grain

af Carol Apollonio

When Fyodor Dostoevsky proclaims that he is a "realist in a higher sense", it is because the facts are irrelevant to his truth. And it is in this spirit that Apollonio approaches Dostoevsky's work, reading through the facts-the text-of his canonical novels for the deeper truth that they distort, mask, and, ultimately, disclose.