The House of the Dead

The House of the Dead - Paperback

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The House of the Dead
  • The House of the Dead
The House of the Dead - Paperback

The House of the Dead - Paperback

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
$14.00
$14.00

Book Overview

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Author), David McDuff (Translator), David McDuff (Introduction by)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's harrowing, semi-autobiographical novel about the internal transformation of a man serving ten years in a remote Siberian prison

"In order to understand the significance of the style and structure of the book, it is necessary to bear in mind that it was the result of a terrible mental, spiritual, and physical ordeal. . . . The point about the novel, however, is that it charts the reawakening of a man without a personality."--from the Introduction

Here was the house of the living dead, and a life like none other upon earth.

In January 1850, Fyodor 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.

This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by David McDuff discussing the circumstances of Dostoyevsky's imprisonment, the origins of the novel in his prison writings, and the character of Aleksandr Petrovich.

Author Biography

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), one of nineteenth-century Russia's greatest novelists, spent four years in a convict prison in Siberia, after which he was obliged to enlist in the army. In later years his penchant for gambling sent him deeply into debt. Most of his important works were written after 1864, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, all available from Penguin Classics.

David McDuff was educated at the University of Edinburgh and has translated a number of works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.


David McDuff was educated at the University of Edinburgh and has translated a number of works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

Number of Pages: 368
Dimensions: 0.86 x 7.72 x 5.2 IN
Publication Date: January 07, 1986
ISBN9780140444568
Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
PublisherPenguin Classics
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedJanuary 1986
LanguageENG- English
Pages368
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Classics Fiction Short Stories

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About Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81) was educated in Moscow and at the School of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg, where he spent four years. In 1846, he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk; it was an immediate critical and popular success. This was followed by short stories and the novel The Double. While at work on Netochka Nezvanova, the twenty-seven-year-old author was arrested for belonging to a young socialist group. He was tried and condemned to death, but at the last moment his sentence was commuted to prison in Siberia. He spent four years in the penal settlement as Omsk. In 1859, he was granted full amnesty and allowed to return to St. Petersburg. In the fourteen years before his death, Dostoyevsky produced his greatest works, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. The last was published a year before his death.

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