Vladimir Nabokov | Lectures in Russian Literature | Books to read

In Lectures in Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov criticizes Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment as melodramatic and philosophically crude. He finds Raskolnikov an unconvincing thinker and rejects the novel’s moral-religious framework as heavy-handed.

Prioritizing aesthetic precision, Nabokov argues Dostoevsky sacrifices artistic control for sensationalism, preferring Tolstoy and viewing Dostoevsky’s fame as driven more by emotional excess than genuine literary craftsmanship overall.