Fyodor Dostoevsky's final novel, published shortly before his death in 1881, is a philosophical drama built around a murder and the bitter entanglements of a single family. At its heart is the dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three very different sons: the passionate, impulsive Dmitri, locked in a rivalry with his father over both money and a woman; the coldly intellectual Ivan, tormented by doubt and unable to reconcile a good God with a world of suffering; and the gentle, faithful Alyosha, a novice under the saintly elder Zosima. When the father is murdered, suspicion falls on Dmitri, and the ensuing investigation and trial become the occasion for Dostoevsky to probe questions of guilt, free will, faith, and moral responsibility. The novel contains some of the most famous passages in world literature, above all Ivan's parable of the Grand Inquisitor, in which a returning Christ is confronted by a Church that has traded freedom for security—a meditation on liberty, authority, and human weakness that stands on its own as a landmark of religious and political thought. Around these philosophical set pieces Dostoevsky sustains a gripping, melodramatic story rich in suspense, courtroom theater, and vivid characterization. Beneath the plot runs his central preoccupation: whether human beings can find meaning and moral order in a world where, as Ivan fears, "everything is permitted" if God does not exist. Expansive, intense, and psychologically penetrating, The Brothers Karamazov is widely regarded as Dostoevsky's masterpiece and one of the supreme achievements of the novel.