Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death: or Language Haunted by Sex (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)

Julia Kristeva has been both attracted and repelled by Dostoyevsky since her youth. In this extraordinary book, by turns poetic and intensely personal, she brings her unique critical sensibility to bear on the tormented and visionary Russian author. Kristeva ranges widely across Dostoyevskys novels and his journalism, plunging deep into the great worksand many of the smaller onesto investigate her fascination with the Russian author. What emerges is a luminous vision of the writers achievements, seen in a wholly new way through Kristevas distinctive perspective on language. With her keen psychoanalytical eye, she offers brilliant insights into the passionate heroines of the great novels. Focusing on Dostoyevskys polyphonic writing, Kristeva also demonstrates the importance of Orthodox Christianity throughout his body of work, analyzing the complex ways his carnivalesque theology informs his fiction and commentary. An original and profound interpretation of one of the nineteenth centurys greatest writers, this books insights are also relevant to the twentieth and twenty-first centuriesup to our unsettled present, to which Kristevas humane reading of the suffering Russian author brings understanding and even solace.