Fyodor Dostoyevsky

First published in 1862 after Dostoyevsky's imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp, "The House of the Dead" is a collection of memoirs, related by themes, that portrays the horrific life of convicts. The author drew on his own experiences in prison to depict the squalor, destitution, and severity of a Siberian camp with remorseless detail. Dostoyevsky reveals the characters of many of the other convicts, which includes the depravity many have come...

Classic fiction. Based on Dostoevsky's own troubled experiences at the gaming tables, The Gambler is a brilliant and telling portrayal of a man crippled by the overwhelming powers of addiction and obsession. Stationed in the house of a tyrannical Russian general, Aleksei Ivanovich seeks solace in the hypnotic turn of the roulette wheel. Yet what begins as an idle pastime soon becomes a dangerous obsession as Ivanovich sinks deeper into debt. Observing...

Drawing upon experiences from his own prison days, the author recounts in feverish tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil. Believing that he is above the law, and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old woman -- a pawnbroker whom he regards as "stupid, ailing, greedy... good for nothing." Overwhelmed afterwards by feelings...

His final and greatest work, Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published serially in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880. Set against a modernizing 19th-century Russia, the characters experience moral struggles of faith, judgment, and reason amid a patricidal murder which forms the center of the plot. The novel is full of ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. Dostoyevsky...