Since shortly after Dostoevskij’s death in 1881, the task of analyzing the author’s religious views has been taken up by fellow writers, literary critics, philosophers and theologians alike, and their conclusions have been remarkably diverse. Dostoevskij has been characterized as an Orthodox believer, an atheist and a deist, the proponent of Christ and the Devil’s advocate, the supporter of a universal church and a critic of Catholicism, as the proponent of a specifically Russian church and as a commentator on the cult of suffering and its role in Russian Christianity. How can the oeuvre of a single author have given rise to such a diverse and mutually contradictory set of interpretations? Why does the vision of a novelist, conveyed primarily in fictional form, carry such enduring appeal for those who study the problem of belief? In this book Steven Cassedy explores not only the contradictions of Dostoevskij’s own beliefs, but also the peculiar critical legacy the author left behind,...