The Brothers Karamazov

Not for the faint of heart, The Brothers Karamazov is a massive book in volume, content and vocabulary- but it will most certainly reward the reader who puts forth the effort to comprehend this book, and only improves upon subsequent readings. It sweeps you up in a whirlwind of emotionally charged events that can, at times, be overwhelming as it both dregs the depths of human evil and soars to the heights of human charity. Blinding in its brilliance and bewildering in its scope, despite its 900+ pages this book is truly worth a second reading, as the first reading is necessary to understand the complex storyline and it is really upon the second go that you can begin to unravel the philosophical threads of which this tangled tale is made. As a philosophical novel it is one of the most famous- "The Grand Inquisitor" is one of the most well-known individual chapters in all of literature. It will well re-pay all thought bestowed upon its explorations of life, death, and the existence of God triple-fold, giving back far more thoughts than you put into it. To sum up, my recommendation is: by all means, read this book, and by all means, read it twice!