Dostoevsky as Suicidologist

The book adds a valuable perspective to our knowledge of Dostoevsky’s novels. A law professor, holding a Ph.D. in English literature, Ronner writes with passion, eloquence, and erudition. The abundance of footnotes bears evidence to her painstaking work. The central thrust of her study is compelling and convincing. It vindicates the idea that being an accurate “tool” for understanding people’s behavior, great literature often anticipates the discoveries of sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The book reminds us that Dostoevsky recognized the importance of familial, religious, and social ties, and demonstrated the negative impact of individualism, egoism, and nihilism.

* The Russian Review *

Dostoevsky is much too capacious and universally inspiring to be the property of narrow specialists. For some time, Russian scholars have admired law professor Amy D. Ronner’s ability to set Dostoevsky’s works in conversation with contemporary legal issues. This new book brings out in full measure her brilliance as literary critic and scholar. The centrality of suicide in Dostoevsky’s work has not escaped notice, but this is the first book devoted entirely to the problem, and it does so with a dazzlingly multidisciplinary framework. But most impressive is her rigorous, unfailingly insightful close reading of Dostoevsky’s post-exile writing. This book is accessible and unjargonated. It is highly recommended for anyone who would more deeply understand Dostoevsky’s fiction and aesthetics.

-- William Mills Todd III, professor emeritus, Harvard University

Of all the sins committed by Dostoevsky’s characters, murder is surely the most horrifying and, of all murders, self-murder the most shocking. In this groundbreaking new study, Amy D. Ronner provides us with a theoretical lens through which to penetrate suicide’s mysteries and find purpose within its seeming purposelessness. This is a foundational book that makes a major contribution to Dostoevsky studies while simultaneously illuminating a dark spot within the culture of nineteenth-century Russia as a whole.

-- Marcia A. Morris, professor emerita, Georgetown University

In her sixth book, Dostoevsky as Suicidologist, Amy D. Ronner brings her razor-sharp legal mind to bear on the incalculable mystery of suicide and Dostoevsky’s many representations of it. Through the lens of Durkheim’s classic work, Suicide, but also with reference to the works of many other theorists and social thinkers, Ronner expands our understanding of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre in unexpected ways while deepening our general knowledge about the nature of suicide.

-- Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis Univer