In 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sent to a Siberian prison camp for four years due to his involvement in an organization that had been banned by the Tsar. While there, he experienced a personal transformation, and after another six years of exile, he returned to St. Petersburg and wrote the semi-autobiographical novel The House of the Dead, which he finished in 1862.
The book is structured around the reminiscences of the protagonist, Alexandr Petrovtich Goryanchikov, who is sent to a hard labor camp in Siberia for murdering his wife. Over the course of the novel, he gets to know the prison's other inhabitants, seeing the harsh brutality and the deep human decency that exists within both the guards and the convicts.
A searing, unflinching account of suffering and redemption, The House of the Dead launched the prison-memoir genre and remains one of literature's most humane portraits of life behind bars.
A ex-convict in 19th-century Russia reminisces on his experiences in a Siberian prison.
