Memories from the House of the Dead

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881): His first novel, The Humanlets, was published in 1846. The famous critic V. Belinski spoke of Dostoevsky as the great writer of the future on this work. However, his later published works did not attract much attention at that time. The writer was arrested in 1849 on the grounds that he was a member of the Petrashevsky group, which opposed the oppressive regime of Nicholas I. When he was about to be shot, his sentence was commuted to exile and compulsory military service. After completing his sentence and returning from Siberia, he started publishing the magazine Vremya in Petersburg. Memories from the House of the Dead, published in this magazine between 1861-1862, vividly reflect the impressions of Dostoevsky’s exile years in Siberia.