The House of the Dead Author:Fyodor Dostoyevsky In 1849, at the age of 28, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was unjustly accused of political conspiracy and sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp. There, among thieves, murderers, and low-born convicts, he endured horrifying degradation. But he never lost faith in the human qualities of even the most bestial criminal types, and from... more » this crushing experience of imprisonment, he emerged spiritually strengthened.
The House of the Dead, presented in fictional form as the memoirs of a man condemned to ten years of penal servitude for murdering his wife, is in essence the account of this purgatorial period of Dostoyevsky's life. It is a remarkable, haunting work, and was considered by Tolstoy to be the the best of Dostoyevsky's achievements.« less