Greatest Writers of all time?
I wouldn't agree entirely, but that's the thing with these sorts of list - it's all a matter of personal taste. I don't think anyone can compile a "Top Ten" list that will be accepted by everyone. edit: I think it's quite a good list. I certainly agree with the placement Shakespeare, Homer and James Joyce. @Ebony: Dear God, I hope you're joking. Also, that thumbs-up was from me - i meant to hit "thumbs down". Edit: Stephen King is an amazing writer, but I feel like he's let down his later work a little bit :( He's good, but perhaps not good enough for that list. Me, I'm rooting for J.R.R Tolkien. He's number one on my "favourite writers" list, but like I said, a lot of people would object. Oh well, freedom of speech.
Who are the five greatest writers of all time?
William Shakespeare - he covered everything and every nuance of the human soul, from love to envy, from sadism to sublime romance. I think nobody conveyed the mimetic desire, the envy, the competition that pushes us forward but also kills our happiness in a more thorough manner than ShakespeareFeodor Dostoevsky - His novels are even by today standards supreme achievements of crime stories, Gothic atmosphere, incredibly deep plunging into the darkest secrets of the human psyche(some of Dostoevsky’s characters are still unsurpassed by the most daring and provocative villains of today-thinking about Stavrogin from The Devils and Svidrigailov of Crime and Punishment)Leo Tolstoy - The most towering vision of the society and humans in general, the guy that everybody revered, loved, looked upon to. A real emperor of the literature, a Caesar in all meritsCharles Dickens - The epitome of the Anglo -Saxon story line of the hero that struggles and makes it. The victory of the good vs evil in the most epic dimensions but in the same time extremely intimate and attentive to details. Dickens characters are the total opposite of the Russian’s ones. His characters start from low and get up, the Russians start from the middle and go into havoc.Anton Chekhov - My personal favorite, in the past he used to be my everyday spiritual bread. The most delicate observer while the most merciless with human hope in general. By far the best short story writer of all times and the best play writer of the modern eraSpecial mentions - Homer, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, Stendhal, Thomas Mann, Nikolai Gogol.
What is Fyodor Dostoevsky known for?
Sample this-"I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased...However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors..."-from Notes from the underground by F.D. I bet, those are one of the strongest starting lines to any novel ever written. Immediately, alarms started going off in my head. My reaction-"What the Hell? Who is this guy? What's wrong? Why so much anger? Why so much spite. Tell me more..." I was hooked. It was useless to resist. The first few sentences left me no choice other than to read it through. I refer you to this article- Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut? - The New Yorker F.D. (1846–1881) is the one of the greatest novelist of all time. Russian by origin, he known for his existentialist writings, distinct narrative and peculiar characters. Notes from the underground, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Poor People, White Nights are some of his notable works.To rest my case, I refer you to Mr. Eliot Rosewater (A character from the novel Slaughterhouse-Five) who says that Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov contains "everything there was to know about life".
Which Fyodor Dostoyevsky book shall I read to start with?
Notes from Underground is the shortest, but my introduction was Crime and Punishment.In high school, I was always reading, but never reading what was assigned me. Assign me Kate Chopin? Thanks, I’ll read Tacitus. Assign me Tacitus. . . who are we kidding? Tacitus? Who’s Tacitus? But had I been assigned Tacitus, who knows but that I might have turned that very moment to The Awakening. But a couple of times, in moments of extreme boredom — invariably in “health” class — I would not have my unassigned reading with me, and wind up reading what was assigned to me in its stead.Crime and Punishment was assigned reading, and I duly started it in health class. It took over my life. (I was, serendipitously, reading Nietzsche on my own time; Raskolnikov was interesting lens through which to consider some Nietzschean ideas. But this wasn’t why the book got me.) The novel is:A nail-biting crime thriller;A brilliant series of character studies;A wildly diverting representation of the tempestuous milieux of nineteenth-century Russia,as well as Russian political and religious and philosophical discourse;As persuasive an account of how suffering can be redemptive as I’d read to that point, or would read afterward.The effect of the novel was to make me go out and read every Dostoevsky novel I could get my hands on, plus House of the Dead. I loved all of them, but of course, the most extraordinary place it took me was to The Brothers Karamazov, a novel which, to quote Augustine, “changed my entire way of feeling.”You won’t regret it. The scenes between Raskolnikov and Porfiry are nail-biters. Sonia Marmeladov is one of the glories of Dostoevsky’s imagination, even if she is an iteration of the “sacred whore” topos feminists are right to frown about — she is still, in my mind, a model of human loving-kindness, and she’ll make you cry.The current masters of Russian lit translation are the great tag-team of Pevear and Volokhonsky. I recommend their version, though my first Crime and Punishment was a ratty old Penguin edition.
Christians, what do you think of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel the Brother's Karamazov ................?
Yes, following the church, or any group, and following Christ are two very different things. We are responsible for following Christ on our own. We are all responsible for answering the devil's temptations in the same way as Christ answered them even though it may lead to unhappiness. This reminds me of a story told by Paris Reidhead: "Two young Moravians heard of an island in the West Indies where an atheist British owner had 2000 to 3000 slaves. And the owner had said, “No preacher, no clergyman will ever stay on this island. If he is shipwrecked we will keep him in a separate house until he has to leave, but he is never going to talk to any of us about God. I am through with all that nonsense.” Three thousand slaves from the jungles of Africa brought to an island in the Atlantic and there to live an die without hearing of Christ. "Two young Moravians heard about it. They sold themselves to the British planter and used the money they received from their sale—for he paid no more than he would for any slave—to pay their passage out to his island for he wouldn’t even transport them. And as the ship left he river at Hamburg, let its pier in the river at Hamburg and was going out into the North Sea carried with the tide the Moravians had come Herrenhut to see these two lads off in their early 20s, never to return again. For this wasn’t a four year term. They had sold themselves into lifetime slavery simply that as slaves they could be as Christians for these others were. "The families were there weeping for they knew they would never see them again. And they wondered why they were going and questioned the wisdom of it. And as the gap widened and the houses had been cast off and were being curled up there on the pier and the young boys saw the widening gap, one lad with his arm linked through the arm of his fellow raised his hand and shouted across the gap the last words that were heard from them. They were these. 'May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of his sufferings.'"
Who is better: Stephanie Meyer , Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Lev Tolstoy?
Obviously, these three writers are among the best Russian writers that there ever were. Lev Tolstoy (or as you capitalist Americans call him, "Leo" Tolstoy) wrote great works such as War and Peace, a treatise on the War on Terror. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote the Brothers Karamazov, a famous book about brothas' who live in the tough neighborhoods of Watts and later move to Harlem. Stephanie Meyer, of course, wrote the now famous Twilight. Sadly, this wonderful book only became famous posthumously after her death in the Russian Revolution. Just like the great Alexander Pushkin, she died young. Which one of the three titans of Russian literature would you consider the best? Personally, I would have to say Stephenie Meyer, as she DID inspire works such as Stoker's Dracula and Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer.