<b>The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky</b>&nbsp;(Russian:&nbsp;?????? ??????????,&nbsp;<i>Brat&#39;ya Karamazovy</i>,&nbsp;pronounced&nbsp;['brat?j? k?r?'maz?v?]), also translated as&nbsp;<i><b>The Karamazov Brothers</b></i>, is the last&nbsp;novel&nbsp;by&nbsp;Russian&nbsp;author&nbsp;Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing&nbsp;<i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>, which was published as a serial in&nbsp;<i>The Russian Messenger</i>&nbsp;from January 1879 to November 1880. Dostoevsky died less than four months after its publication.<br /><br />Set in 19th-century Russia,&nbsp;<i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>&nbsp;is a passionate&nbsp;philosophical novel&nbsp;that enters deeply into questions of God, free will, and morality. It is a&nbsp;theological drama&nbsp;dealing with problems of faith, doubt, and reason in the context of a modernizing Russia, with a plot that revolves around the subject of&nbsp;patricide. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in&nbsp;Staraya Russa, which inspired the main setting.<br /><br />It has been acclaimed as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.<br /><br />The opening of the novel introduces the Karamazov family and relates the story of their distant and recent past. The details of Fyodor Pavlovich&#39;s two marriages, as well as his indifference to the upbringing of his three children, is chronicled.<br /><br />The narrator also establishes the widely varying personalities of the three brothers and the circumstances that have led to their return to their father&#39;s town. The first book concludes by describing the mysterious&nbsp;Eastern Orthodox&nbsp;tradition of the&nbsp;Elders. Alyosha has become devoted to the Elder at the local monastery.