The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Karamazov is a buffoonish, grasping old sensualist, and each of his three sons has inherited a different piece of his hunger: Dmitri burns with passion and debt, Ivan with corrosive intellect and doubt, and Alyosha, the novice monk, with a faith that the whole novel puts on trial. When father and eldest son become rivals over the same woman and the same rubles, the collision ends in murder, and in one of the most gripping courtroom sequences ever written.

Around that scaffold of a family crime story, Dostoyevsky hangs everything he had: the Grand Inquisitor's challenge to God, a devil who visits in shabby evening dress, saints, scoundrels, and children wronged beyond forgiving. It is a huge listen, and it earns every hour. It's a murder mystery whose real question is what human beings are for.

At roughly 339,900 words, The Brothers Karamazov runs about 38 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
2. Search for “The Brothers Karamazov” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

Speech is generated locally without uploading the book for narration. Download the book and check your chosen voice before travelling offline. Available voices depend on your device; check the in-app voice list. Try every available voice for your first 8 hours of listening. Afterwards, keep a free English voice selection and unlimited book listening. No LoudReader account or word quota.