RAG Demo

Tag: Existentialism

  • Crime and Punishment

    Rodion Raskolnikov is a former law student living in a cramped garret in the poorest quarter of St Petersburg. Proud, feverish and penniless, he has persuaded himself that extraordinary people have the right to overstep moral law for a higher purpose, and he plans to prove it by killing an old pawnbroker whom he regards as worthless.

    The murder is revealed early, and the novel's suspense lies in what follows: Raskolnikov's mental unravelling, his cat-and-mouse conversations with the shrewd investigating magistrate Porfiry Petrovich, and his relationships with his devoted mother and sister, his loyal friend Razumikhin, and Sonya Marmeladova, a gentle young woman driven into prostitution to feed her family. The sinister Svidrigailov offers a dark mirror of Raskolnikov's ideas.

    Published in instalments in 1866, the novel examines guilt, alienation, poverty and the dangers of rationalist ideologies that place an idea above human life. Its feverish interior perspective made it a forerunner of existentialist fiction and one of the most influential works in world literature.

    Book details

    AuthorFyodor Dostoevsky
    First published1866
    Original languageRussian
    Translated byConstance Garnett
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)551
    SettingSt Petersburg, Russia, 1860s

    Themes

    • Guilt
    • Morality
    • Poverty
    • Alienation
    • Redemption

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy intense psychological fiction and big moral questions explored through a gripping story.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Brothers Karamazov
    • The Stranger
    • Notes from Underground

  • Man’s Search for Meaning

    Viktor E. Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist and neurologist who was deported in 1942 and spent the next years in several camps, including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Dachau subsidiary camps. His parents, brother and wife died in the Holocaust. He wrote the first part of this book in a matter of days soon after liberation.

    That first part is not a chronicle of atrocities but a psychological study of camp life seen from the inside. Frankl describes the phases prisoners passed through, from shock to apathy to the strange disorientation of release, and observes that those who held on to a purpose, a loved one or a task waiting for them were often better able to endure. Even when everything else is taken away, he argues, people keep the freedom to choose their attitude.

    The second part outlines logotherapy, the school of psychotherapy Frankl founded, which treats the search for meaning as the primary human motivation. He suggests meaning can be found through work, through love, and through the way one faces unavoidable suffering. The book has sold millions of copies and is regularly listed among the most influential works of the twentieth century.

    Book details

    AuthorViktor E. Frankl
    First published1946
    Original languageGerman
    Translated byIlse Lasch
    GenrePsychology
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)165
    SettingNazi concentration camps, 1942-1945

    Themes

    • Meaning
    • Suffering
    • Freedom of attitude
    • Holocaust
    • Resilience

    Who should read it

    Anyone facing hardship or loss, and readers interested in how people find purpose under the worst conditions.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Diary of a Young Girl
    • If This Is a Man
    • When Breath Becomes Air