The Brothers Karamazov is set in Skotoprigonyevsk, a Russian provincial town, and in the neighboring monastery, around 1866, between late August and early November. The chronicler writes thirteen years later.
The book's places are few and recur. Fyodor Pavlovich's house, old and full of pantries, where the old man and the servants live; the monastery's hermitage, with the elder's cell and the guesthouse; the house of Madame Khokhlakova and that of Katerina Ivanovna; Grushenka's pavilion, at the widow Morozova's; the hut of Captain Snegiryov. Mokroye, some twenty-odd versts away, is the site of the party and of Mitya's arrest.
Time is short. In Parts Two and Three, the novel covers days, sometimes hours: the meeting in the cell lasts one morning; Book VII covers one day and one night; Book VIII, Mitya's dash, two days and a night. The trial occupies a whole day. Between the crime and the trial two months pass, and the Epilogue comes five days later.
The town has a modern court, with a jury, and Russia behind it: the era of reforms, of the end of serfdom, of liberals and socialists. But the novel enters that background only through what the characters say.