Why Gen Z Goes Mad for Dostoyevsky

In a letter written after his release from a Siberian prison camp, in 1854, Fyodor Dostoyevsky defined himself as “a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt”. The materialism, nihilism, and atheism which spasmed across 19th-century Russia, forces which Dostoyevsky vehemently fought against in his writings, are those which underpin modern liberalism in our own period of disbelief and doubt. Yet, this is not the only way in which Dostoyevsky’s work chimes with contemporary life.