Svidrigailov simply is the most memorable figure in the book, obscuring Raskolnikov, who after all is the protagonist, a hero-villain, and a kind of surrogate for Dostoevsky himself.

    This provides the most substantial selection of his stories ever available in English. Garshin gives voice to the unease of an era that knew the horrors of modern war, and the squalors of rapid industrialization.This selection, the most substantial in English for three-quarters of a century, contains the best of Garshin’s fiction – sixteen stories, almost all the published work completed in a tragically short life. The epic title story on the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; The Red Flower, Carshin’s haunting masterpiece set in a lunatic asylum; the compact war story Four Days which pioneers stream-of-consciousness technique; masterly and moving stories such as Artists and Orderly and Officer; the semiotic tour de force The Signal; the reworked legend Haggai the Proud, here translated into English for the first time; a handful of fables, including the allegory on the revolutionary movement Attalea princeps – the thematic and stylistic variety is impressive.