Book Report on Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" The main characters of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov are, as the title suggests, the members of the Karamazov "family," if it can indeed be called such. The only things that the members of this family share are a name and the "Karamazov curse," a legacy of base impulses and voluptuous lust. References to this tendency towards immorality are sprinkled heavily throughout the novel; phrases such as "a brazen brow and a Karamazov conscience," "voluptuary streak," and "Karamazovian baseness" abound