BRAT’YA KARAMAZOVY [In Russian, Cyrillic]

St. Petersburg: Pateleevyi Brothers, 1881. 2 volumes. RARE FIRST EDITION. Both half-titles present. 8vo, in later half brown morocco over brown boards, the spines with raised bands and gilt lettering in Cyrillic, edges marbled, now housed in a quarter morocco clamshell case. 509; 699 pp. An exceptionally well preserved and proper copy of this very rare edition, Vol. I lacking only the final blank, some very minor and expected spotting or blemishes, two leaves with minor and expert paper repairs, in all a very handsome and proper example of this rare world literary classic. VERY RARE, THE TRUE FIRST EDITION OF DOSTOEVSKY'S THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, A MASTERPIECE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV was Dostoevsky's final novel, on which he spent most of the last two years of his life writing. It is more then a classic of Russian Literature, it is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. One of literatures greatest spiritual dramas, it has been acclaimed all over the world by thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Cormac McCarthy, Kurt Vonnegut and Pope Benedict XVI as one of the supreme achievements in literature.