The Brothers Karamazov tells how the murder of the old Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, in a Russian provincial town, puts to the test the faith, reason and guilt of his three sons, and ends with the wrong son condemned by him and with a group of boys gathered around a grave.
In Part One, the chronicler introduces Fyodor, a depraved landowner and buffoon, and the three sons he never raised: Mitya, sensual and honorable in his own way; Ivan, the intellectual who does not believe; and Alyosha, the youngest, a novice of Elder Zosima. To settle an inheritance dispute, the family gathers in the elder's cell, and the meeting ends in scandal. Mitya, engaged to Katerina Ivanovna, competes with his father for the woman Grushenka.
In Parts Two and Three, Ivan tells Alyosha of his rebellion against a world that exacts the suffering of a child, and of the poem of the Grand Inquisitor; Elder Zosima dies, the body smells bad, and Alyosha's faith is shaken and then steadied. Mitya runs after three thousand rubles, is arrested in Mokroye and accused of killing his father, and the investigation closes in around him with facts he cannot explain.
In Part Four, the boy Ilyusha dies. Ivan discovers, through Smerdyakov's confession, that the servant killed the old man and that he himself incited him; he sees the devil; he is carried out of the court as a madman, and Mitya is condemned. The Epilogue closes with Ilyusha's funeral and Alyosha's speech by the stone.