The House of the Dead - by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Description: The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky paperback in used condition "In 1849, from a last-minute reprieve in front of a firing-squad, Dostoevsky was sent in chains, almost straight from the scaffold, to penal servitude in Siberia. There, he spent four years in the company of murderers, robbers, and other criminals from all parts of Russia. The House of the Dead is a distillation of the terror of these few minutes before execution, and the harrowing experiences of his interminable prison life in Siberia. This book, perhaps more than any other of his works, laid the foundation for all of Dostoevsky's later novels. Here is revealed the "second sight" which had been given the novelist in the convict prison of Omsk. It was in Siberia that Dostoevsky plunged into that psychic and spiritual underworld which played such an important part in all of his post-Siberian work. Only a man who had passed through the trials described in The House of the Dead could have become so acutely alive to the significance social and metaphysical of the human self as Dostoevsky. The House of the Dead is a concise and objective account of Dostoevsky's personal experiences while he was serving his prison sentence in Siberia. It is a detached and intensely realistic document, completely devoid of self-pity, preaching or moralizing. It is especially notable for the deep psychological insight which foreshadows the author's later preoccupation with the theme of the human soul in torment. Its dispassionate description of the appalling Russian penal system of the time makes it a remarkable social document. And the writing of some of its passages - such as the scene of convicts in the bath - is unsurpassed anywhere in modern literature."

Price: 25 USD

Location: Tivoli, New York

End Time: 2024-12-31T07:38:31.000Z

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