The full force of Julia Kristeva's lifetime of (psycho)analyzing revolutionary writers and speaking beings come together in this masterful analysis of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's life and work. Dostoyevsky's polyphonic novels, as Kristeva brilliantly shows, exemplify the human capacity for sublimation. Decades before Freud's discovery of the unconscious and its primary processes, Dostoyevsky was very deliberately wielding the sting of the negative, turning demons into words, new meanings, and art.–Noëlle McAfee, author of Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis