Hear a BBC Radio Drama of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: Streaming Free for a Limited Time

A quick heads up: For the next two weeks, you can stream a BBC Radio 4 drama­ti­za­tion of Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky’s final nov­el, The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov. Pub­lished between Jan­u­ary 1879 and Novem­ber 1880, the philo­soph­i­cal nov­el has influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of readers–certainly me, maybe you, and then some oth­er notable fig­ures like Ein­stein, Wittgen­stein, Hei­deg­ger, Freud and more. The radio drama­ti­za­tion is trun­cat­ed, just 5 hours, where­as most com­plete ver­sions run 34 hours. (Find those in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. Or get a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read ver­sion on Audible.com, by check­ing out Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al pro­gram.) Below, you can find the install­ments of the BBC radio dra­ma.

• Episode 1: Rus­sia, 1880: The unpre­dictable Fyo­dor Kara­ma­zov and his sons are reunit­ed to dis­cuss Dmit­ry’s inher­i­tance. Stars Roy Mars­den.
• Episode 2: As Alyosha attends to dying Father Zosi­ma, rela­tions between Dmit­ry and his father turn ever more dan­ger­ous. Stars Paul Hilton.
• Episode 3: Fol­low­ing a vio­lent encounter at the Kara­ma­zov home, Dmit­ry flees the town in search of Grushen­ka. Stars Paul Hilton.
• Episode 4: As Dmit­ry goes on tri­al for mur­der, Alyosha des­per­ate­ly seeks proof of his inno­cence. Stars Paul Hilton and Carl Prekopp.
• Episode 5: Fol­low­ing Ivan’s dra­mat­ic appear­ance at his broth­er’s tri­al, Kate­ri­na pre­pares to deal Dmit­ry a fatal blow. Stars Paul Hilton.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Fyo­dor Dostoyevsky’s Life & Lit­er­a­ture Intro­duced in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es