Anna Barker: From Peter the Great to Napoleon the Lesser: Dostoevsky and the Great Men of History

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864), his first consequential post-Siberian imprisonment publication, explores the tragicomedy of humanity’s entrapment in the confines soul-sapping modernity and serves as the foundation of the existential and metaphysical concepts he addresses in the Great Five: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, and Brothers Karamazov.

In commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the novel’s publication, The Iowa City Book Festival presents an evening with two parts:

• At 4:30 p.m., University of Iowa Adjunct Assistant Professor Anna Barker will present the talk “From Peter the Great to Napoleon the Lesser: Dostoevsky and the Great Men of History.”
• At 6 p.m., Taxi Driver,  Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film that is the novel’s most famous US adaptation, will be screened. Barker will lead a post-screening discussion immediately following, where she will discuss the way the film explores the issues of underage woman trafficking, prostitution, gun violence, war caused PTSD, and urban decay of  the U.S. in the 1970s through the prism of Dostoevsky’s tale of moral decline and social alienation.