Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece of murder, the ensuing mental anguish, and finally a spiritual restoration. Truly one of the great novels of all time, and one of the most readable. Dostsoyevsky's depth of insight has been widely appreciated. Ernest Hemingway stated that in Dostoyevsky "there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true that they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know." James Joyce , on the other hand, praised Dostoyevsky's prose: "... he is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence."