The House of the Dead

Drawing on the four years Dostoevsky spent in a Siberian labor camp for his part in a banned discussion circle, this book records prison life through the eyes of Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, a nobleman convicted of killing his wife. The frame is thin fiction stretched over hard memory. Goryanchikov watches thieves, forgers, and murderers at close range and slowly learns to see the men behind the crimes rather than the crimes themselves. There is cruelty here, and filth, and the small dignities prisoners invent to stay human. Written soon after his release, it feeds directly into the moral questions that drive his later novels. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available to download.