Richard Pevear

Fyodor Dostoevsky

A man condemned to penal servitude in Siberia relates the effects of imprisonment on himself and his fellow prisoners.

Notes from a Dead House

Constance Garnett

Accused of political subversion as a young man, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to 4 years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp. Years later, he developed this semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to penal servitude for murdering his wife. This haunting and remarkable work ranks amoung Dostoyevsky's greatest masterpieces.

The House of the Dead

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“Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.”

The Life in a Siberian Prison “Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead Written after the author himself experienced four years of hard labor in Siberia, The House of the Dead is the story of one Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov – a gentleman from the noble class – who is deported in Siberia for murdering his wife. At first he can’t adapt to the harsh conditions and to the fellow inmates – mostly member of the lower classes. Eventually however, he starts to see the life in Siberia in a different perspective. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes

I was not expecting a semi-autobiography in a philosophical book, but 

 offers a closer angle on the lives of convicts in Siberia during the harsh conditions of the 1880s, which might even change one’s perspective on life. A nobleman, Alexander Petrovich, experienced the life of peasants, and his view of his temporary life in prison raised his curiosity. Although the stories of his peers in prison can pique general interest, they feel somewhat bleak compared to other works by Dostoevsky. Perhaps I am complaining due to my inexperience with such storytelling, as the book could pass as non-fiction if told as a true story. Each character is perhaps only briefly mentioned, and therefore, I cannot recall particular details about them. Nonetheless, it is eye-opening to peek into a life so harsh and isolated, which could lead to either insanity or repentance. As Petrovich stated:

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I was not expecting a semi-autobiography in a philosophical book, but The House of the Dead offers a closer angle on the lives of convicts in Siberia during the harsh conditions of the 1880s, which might even change one’s perspective on life. A nobleman, Alexander Petrovich, experienced the life of peasants, and his view of his temporary life in prison raised his curiosity. Although the stories of his peers in prison can pique general interest, they feel somewhat bleak compared to other works by Dostoevsky. Perhaps I am complaining due to my inexperience with such storytelling, as the book could pass as non-fiction if told as a true story. Each character is perhaps only briefly mentioned, and therefore, I cannot recall particular details about them. Nonetheless, it is eye-opening to peek into a life so harsh and isolated, which could lead to either insanity or repentance. As Petrovich stated:


Nobody, I know, can care much about it at all except myself; but I write because I think people will understand, and because there are those who have been, those who yet will be, like myself, condemned, imprisoned, cut off from life, in the flower of their age, and in the full possession of all their strength.

In this novel we see a young man madly in love with a girl from a moderately poor family. This girl falls in love with a very aristocratic prince-- a man without principles, but charming in his childish egotism-- extremely attractive by his sincerity, and with a full capacity for quite unconsciously committing the worst crimes toward those with whom life brings him into contact. The psychology of both the girl and the young aristocrat is very good, but where Dostoyevsky appears at his best is in representing how the other young man, rejected by the girl, devotes the whole existence to being her humble servant and again his own will become instrumental in throwing her into the hands of the aristocrat.

The Insulted and Humiliated

there was definitely something gay going on between nataša and katja

It was interesting to hear their experiences. It was an easy read and i never felt bored reading it. 

Athena

Jesse Morley

Nathan Griffin

Harder to get through than a more traditional novel since it's more of a memoir about Dostoevsky's time in a Siberian prison rather than a story with a plot. Still, Dostoevsky's brilliant insight into the inner workings of humanity is still there, and it's easy to see experiences that led to many of the themes he explores in his later works. Certain parts are also incredibly relevant to many of the conversations taking place about incarceration happening today.

Miguel

Alyssa C Smith

Georgia Ball

From the acclaimed translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky comes a new translation of the first great prison memoir: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fictionalized account of his life-changing penal servitude in Siberia. In 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for his participation in a utopian socialist discussion group. The account he wrote after his release, based on notes he smuggled out, was the first book to reveal life inside the Russian penal system. The book not only brought him fame but also founded the tradition of Russian prison writing. Notes from a Dead House (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead) is filled with vivid details of brutal punishments, shocking conditions, feuds and betrayals, and the psychological effects of the loss of freedom, but it also describes moments of comedy and acts of kindness. There are grotesque bathhouse and hospital scenes that seem to have come straight from Dante’s Inferno, alongside daring escape attempts, doomed acts of defiance, and a theatrical Christmas celebration that draws the entire community together in a temporary suspension of their grim reality. To get past government censors, Dostoevsky made his narrator a common-law criminal rather than a political prisoner, but the perspective is unmistakably his own. His incarceration was a transformative experience that nourished all his later works, particularly Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky’s narrator discovers that even among the most debased criminals there are strong and beautiful souls. His story reveals the prison as a tragedy both for the inmates and for Russia; it is, finally, a profound meditation on freedom: “The prisoner himself knows that he is a prisoner; but no brands, no fetters will make him forget that he is a human being.”

Maurice FitzGerald

Noha Abdelaziz

Deniz Erkaradağ

Selin

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

The Insulted And Injured

Britney Ly

In January 1850 Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy. The four years he spent there, startlingly re-created in The House of the Dead, were the most agonizing of his life. In this fictionalized account he recounts his soul-destroying incarceration through the cool, detached tones of his narrator, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov: the daily battle for survival, the wooden plank beds, the cabbage soup swimming with cockroaches, his strange �family� of boastful, ugly, cruel convicts. Yet The House of the Dead is far more than a work of documentary realism: it is also a powerful novel of redemption, describing one man�s spiritual and moral death and the miracle of his gradual reawakening.

Notes from a Dead House

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