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I really like this Christian Encounter series from Thomas Nelson, but, so far, this is my least favorite of the three I have read. (Sir Isaac Newton is here, and Saint Francis is here.) I like history, and biographies, so I am easily enthusiastic about a series of them.

It may be because I like history and biographies that I find myself less enthusiastic about this one.

Fyodor Dostoevsky reads more like a short novel than a strict biography,

and while I am sure some will appreciate the author’s efforts to do so – I am just not one of them.

If anyone qualified to write a novel based on Dostoevsky, it would surely be Dr. Peter Leithart. Professor and pastor, Dr. Leithart taught Dostoevsky for several years at a university level. I am sure that years of study, teaching and discussion will bring a historical figure to life.

Personally, though, I like facts and quotes. When I read a biography, I want to meet the person for myself.

The story plays out in two time frames. In the first, an older Dostoevsky is discussing his life with a friend. Dr. Leithart warns the reader in his Introduction,

“Conversations in Fyodor Dostoevsky, unless specifically cited from another work, were created by the author as a literary device and are to be read as fictionalized accounts of his life” (viii).

I expected these sections to be brief, but they are not. Endnotes do litter the pages, quoting sources from which phrases and ideas were taken directly, but as I read through those passages I just could not trust the dialogue.

The conversation is broken up by flashbacks, in which the author directly relates the events of Dostoevsky’s life, but still more as a narrative than a historical text. These passages are also heavily peppered with endnotes, citing the sources of the events, illustrations, and dialogue.

I can appreciate an author’s style, and am certain that the book is completely accurate, so it wasn’t a huge drawback for me.

My greater disappointment was that it seemed to lack concerning Dostoevsky’s faith.

I knew that Dostoevsky was a great Russian writer and voice. I knew he was a Christian, that he had escaped death by firing squad at the very last moment, and found Christ in a Siberian labor camp. I had hoped that Christian Encounters would tell me more of his journey to faith, of what actually happened in that labor camp, of how it influenced the rest of his life, etc.

But it didn’t.

Maybe there isn’t more to tell. Maybe there is no account of what happened in Siberia. Maybe his faith wasn’t more than a conversation piece here and there, and a wedge between Dostoevsky and some of his socialist contemporaries.

If there were more to the faith of Fyodor Dostoevsky, though, I would have expected to read it in a Christian Encounters biography. There are biographies already about Dostoevsky, and they surely cover his wives, his love affair, his devotion to the Russian people, and his love of Alexander Pushkin. I had hoped for Dostoevsky, The Disciple, from the CE series.

But as literature, it is well written. The story is so engaging, in fact, that I read it in two days. If you’re a Dostoevsky beginner, and you prefer literature to historical texts, you’ll probably love this.