The Insulted and Injured by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky Fiction Literary

The Insulted and Injured is that tale of a love quadrangle -- an improbably unpossessive and uninvidious love quadrangle at that -- told by a young novelist not too unlike Dostoevsky himself. (A young author who has just published a novel so much like Dostoevskys Poor Folk in fact that we find ourselves tempted to wonder over the authors private life. But well refrain.) Vanya (the narrator and fictional author) has a crush on Natasha who has left her family to live with her new lover Alyosha. Alyosha is a sweetheart but hes also a little dim; hes the son of Prince Valkovsky a Machiavellian character whos the villain of the tale. Prince Valkovsky hopes to gain wealth and stature by marrying Alyosha off to an heiress -- Katya. The Princes machinations make him one of the most memorable predatory types in the Dostoevsky ouvre.