Popular works

He wrote dozens of novels and stories, but the “big five” contain his best work.

• Crime and Punishment: This is the first Dostoyevsky novel most people read. A man murders a wealthy old pawnbroker—overtly for money, but on the inside, because he wants to see if he has the same daringness and resilience as people like Napoleon, who are not afraid to kill countless people to achieve their ambitions, or if he will be held back by conscience and fear “like the rest.” The rest of the book is a battle between heart and mind, or, as Dostoyevsky probably intended to imply, between emotions and Enlightenment values.
• Notes from Underground: about a man who is paralyzed and destroyed by overthinking. This, along with “spite” towards living a healthy, conventional, normal lifestyle, lead to him rotting in his apartment all day and thinking.

• The Idiot: Discusses morality and religion in the modern world. An epileptic Russian man grew up secluded under the care of a Swiss doctor, and, upon returning to Russia, decides to make it his life’s purpose to have infinite compassion and put everyone else before himself, just like a true Christian. However, he faces laughter, disgust, and disrespect for his “naive” and “outdated” values. Meanwhile, though, the values of those who laugh at him—nihilism, pride, Enlightenment philosophy, political extremism—lead them to unhappy lives and ill fates themselves.
• The Brothers Karamazov: His magnum opus and the ultimate embodiment of all his beliefs. It's about these three brothers: Dmitri, a hedonist whose life is filled with alcohol and romantic passions, Ivan, who is in a deep existential and theological struggle, and Alyosha, a young monk who wants to love everyone. The book is filled with their moral struggles, love triangles, and the roles they eventually played in a murder case. It's also the most religious of all his novels.
  Oftentimes people single out the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor.” It’s like a shining diamond what’s already Dostoyvesky’s crowning work, so sad and strange and beautiful.
• Demons: His most dark and violent novel, exploring what may happen in a world where moral nihilism and political extremes take hold.