The Permanent Husband

'The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings.' First published in 1870, and later adapted into a popular French film in 1946, The Permanent Husband is a poignant yet darkly funny tale of masculine vanity and misplaced loyalty. When restless landowner, Alexei Ivanovich Velchaninov, encounters Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, an old acquaintance and widowed husband of Velchaninov's former lover, a seemingly polite reunion soon spoils into a battle of guilt, humiliation and revenge. With wounded pride and an obsequious nature, Trusotsky inserts himself into Velchaninov's life once again, oscillating between a reluctant admiration and thinly veiled hostility towards his old friend. As soon as Velchaninov learns he is the biological father of Liza, Trusotsky's eight-year-old daughter, he makes a decision that changes the fates of both the child and Trusotsky forever. A compact, tense and bitterly ironic narrative, The Permanent Husband cements Dostoyevsky as a master of the novel form. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 – 1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist and philosopher. Famed for his masterpieces Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Adolescent, his works are characterised by profound psychological insight and existentialist exploration. Today, he is regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time.