Author(s): Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
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.
About the author:
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821 - 1881) studied at the Military Engineering College in St Petersburg, and achieved officer's rank. Arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death for his involvement in a political coup, he was reprieved at the last moment but sentenced to penal servitude. On his return, he fell into debt as a result of gambling. His greatest works were all written in the last 20 years of his life. David McDuff is a renowned Russian translateor and has written books and articles on Russian literature.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780140444568
Audience: General/trade
Language: English
Number of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 19860401
Publisher: Penguin UK
Product Form: Paperback / softback
Dimensions (LxWxH): 199 mm130 mm18 mm
Weight: 282 gr