Dostoevsky as Suicidologist: Self-Destruction and the Creative Process

Amy Ronner’s sixth book analyzes the multiple suicides in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s writings and his views of the suicide epidemic in Russia.

Through a close reading of the self-murders in Dostoevsky’s post-exile masterpieces, Ronner illustrates how Dostoevsky’s implicit awareness of self-homicide prefigured the theories of prominent suicidologists, shaped his philosophy and craft as a writer, and forged a link between artistry and the impulse to self-annihilate.

Ronner is a professor of law emerita at St. Thomas University College of Law.