Uncle’s Dream, a shorter (150 page) novel which he wrote in 1859, seven years before he wrote Crime and Punishment. All the qualities of the great author are there —insights into Russian lives with all the insights into hidden motives and the psychological manouverings which underpin so much human behaviour. And also, in the case of this book at least, a great sense of humour, which at times lead Dostoevsky to set up almost farcical scenes as family members vie for an inheritance. In Uncle’s Dream, an amibitious mother (Maria Alexandrovna Moskalyova —and I won’t write that again) seeks to marry off her twenty-three year old daughter Zina to the senile Prince K, a distant relative who is passing through the town in which the family live…