50 free Fyodor Dostoevsky trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fyodor Dostoevsky stood in front of a firing squad at 28, spent four years in leg irons in Omsk, lost his wife's clothes at roulette, and still wrote Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. Nietzsche called him the only psychologist he ever learned from; Freud called his last novel the most magnificent ever written. These 50 questions cover the books and the life. The easy tier asks about Raskolnikov's crime, the patricide at the heart of the Karamazovs, Prince Myshkin and the mock execution. The middle reaches Porfiry Petrovich, Father Zosima, the Grand Inquisitor, Holbein's Dead Christ, the Petrashevsky Circle, the 26-day dictation of The Gambler and Anna Snitkina's stamp collecting. The hard tier wants Epoch, Chernyshevsky, Nechayev, Eugénie Grandet, Monk Photius, Kuznetsk, the cigarette factory that funded Vremya and the manuscripts burned on a train to Berlin. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a book club.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Dostoevsky born in 1821?
Moscow
He grew up on the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where his father was a doctor.
Q 02Crime and Punishment was first published in twelve monthly instalments in what year?
1866
It ran in The Russian Messenger and was his first great novel after Siberian exile.
Q 03Whom does Raskolnikov kill in Crime and Punishment?
A pawnbroker
He convinces himself that extraordinary men may commit crimes in pursuit of higher goals.
Q 04What weapon does Raskolnikov use in Crime and Punishment?
An axe
He gains entry by pretending he has something to pawn.
Q 05Which detective investigates the murders in Crime and Punishment?
Porfiry Petrovich
Raskolnikov senses at once that the man knows he is the killer.
Q 06In Crime and Punishment, who is Sonya, the young woman who guides Raskolnikov toward confession?
Marmeladov's daughter
She has turned to prostitution to feed her family; the book treats her with great tenderness.
Q 07The Brothers Karamazov was serialised from 1879 to 1880 in which journal?
The Russian Messenger
Dostoevsky died less than four months after the final instalment.
Q 08The plot of The Brothers Karamazov revolves around what crime?
Patricide
Dostoevsky composed much of it in the spa town of Staraya Russa.
Q 09Which Karamazov brother tells the prose poem "The Grand Inquisitor"?
Ivan
In it a Spanish cardinal arrests a returned Christ for burdening mankind with free will.
Q 10Who is the rumoured illegitimate Karamazov son who serves as his father's servant?
Smerdyakov
His name means "son of the reeking one", after his mute mother, Reeking Lizaveta.
Q 11Which elder monk is Alyosha Karamazov's spiritual guide?
Father Zosima
Parts of his life story were based on a text Dostoevsky found at the Optina Monastery.
Q 12Dostoevsky named Alyosha Karamazov after whom?
His son who died at three
The boy died of epilepsy, inherited from his father, in May 1878 while the novel was being written.
Q 13Who called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written"?
Sigmund Freud
He ranked Dostoevsky second only to Shakespeare as a creative writer.
Q 21Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for belonging to which discussion group?
The Petrashevsky Circle
Members read banned works, including Belinsky's Letter to Gogol.
Q 22What happened at Dostoevsky's scheduled execution by firing squad in December 1849?
It was stayed at the last moment
A cart arrived with a letter from the tsar commuting the sentence as the first group stood before the rifles.
Q 23Dostoevsky served four years of hard labour at a prison camp in which Siberian city?
Omsk
The only book he was allowed was the New Testament.
Q 14Who is the guileless prince at the centre of The Idiot?
Lev Myshkin
Dostoevsky set out to depict "the positively good and beautiful man".
Q 15Which painting erodes Rogozhin's faith in The Idiot?
Holbein's Dead Christ
Dostoevsky saw in it his own urge to confront faith with everything that negated it.
Q 16Which novel did Dostoevsky consider his favourite among his own works?
The Idiot
He admitted much of it was written hurriedly but said he stood behind the idea.
Q 17Notes from Underground was first published in 1864 in which journal?
Epoch
Dostoevsky had founded the magazine with his brother Mikhail after Vremya was suppressed.
Q 18Notes from Underground is often cited as one of the first works of which movement?
Existentialism
Its narrator, a retired civil servant, attacks the idea that life reduces to two times two makes four.
Q 19Which Chernyshevsky novel does the Underground Man attack?
What Is to Be Done?
The novella as a whole is read as an assault on determinism.
Q 20Dostoevsky's first novel, published in 1846, is titled what?
Poor Folk
Critic Vissarion Belinsky hailed it as Russia's first "social novel".
Q 24Which novel drew on Dostoevsky's years in the Siberian prison camp?
The House of the Dead
It was the first published novel about Russian prisons, and Tolstoy admired it greatly.
Q 25Which chronic medical condition did Dostoevsky suffer from throughout his life?
Epilepsy
He gave the affliction to Prince Myshkin in The Idiot.
Q 26Dostoevsky's ruinous addiction was to which casino game?
Roulette
He first played at Wiesbaden in 1863 and kept losing until about 1871.
Q 27Dostoevsky dictated The Gambler in 26 days to which stenographer, later his wife?
Anna Snitkina
Had he missed the deadline, publisher Stellovsky would have owned his works for nine years.
Q 28Which composer turned The Gambler into a 1929 opera?
Sergei Prokofiev
The novel is set in a German casino town called Roulettenburg.
Q 29Demons was inspired by the real murder of Ivan Ivanov by the followers of which agitator?
Sergey Nechayev
Dostoevsky vowed to write a political novel about "the most important problem of our time".
Q 30Constance Garnett's 1916 translation popularised Demons under which English title?
The Possessed
Later translators rejected it, arguing the Russian Bésy means possessors, not the possessed.