The Novel in the Age of Disintegration

"Holland’s book is a must for Dostoevsky scholars as well as for those with a general interest in Russian life and letters at the end of the nineteenth century." —Forum for Modern Language Studies

"Holland’s treatment of tightly interconnected discourse types in Dostoevskii’s literary utopias conforms to Northrop Frye’s typology of genres. But rather than discussing macrostructures and their archetypal genesis, she undertakes a detailed analysis of semantic and even grammatical microstructures that characterized both Dostoevskii’s own writings and the cultural jargon of the two decades that followed the publication of the Tsar’s Emancipation Manifesto in 1861." —Slavic Review
 

"This book is distinguished from other studies of Dostoevskii in two ways: first, it offers an in-depth analysis of two rarely examined texts: The Adolescent and A Writer’s Diary. Second, the book examines Dostoevskii’s poetics of the 1870s with detailed references to historical, literary and religious documents, arguing that his work is a conscious response to social disintegrations and an expression of his wish for unities... To argue that Dostoevskii’s world is pluralistic is far from a novel point of view. Holland manages to reiterate this point by looking at the subtle shifts of genres within the Diary and individual novels, which are experimental and yet reasonable responses in face of the age of disintegration." —Slavic and East European Review