Book Review: Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2023.

Abstract

Here is a nearly 500-page book that concerns not only Russian but world literature; not only writers, such as Dostoevsky and Chekhov, but political agents, such as Lenin and Stalin; not only the wonder evoked by many Russian authors, but also persistent efforts to find certainty in answers to the big questions about the meaning of life, good and evil, and human freedom versus determinism.