In 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sent to a Siberian prison camp for four years due to his involvement in an organization that had been banned by the Tsar. While there, he experienced a personal transformation, and after another six years of exile, he returned to St. Petersburg and wrote the semi-autobiographical novel The House of the Dead , which he finished in 1862.

The book is structured around the reminiscences of the protagonist, Alexandr Petrovtich Goryanchikov, who is sent to a hard labor camp in Siberia for murdering his wife. Over the course of the novel, he gets to know the prison’s other inhabitants, seeing the harsh brutality and the deep human decency that exists within both the guards and the convicts. The book has no conventional plot, but is organized around Alexandr Petrovitch gaining gradual insight into the true nature of the prison and its residents.

Many events and characters in the book are drawn from Dostoevsky’s own experiences, and the enigma of the good and evil that exist in all people was a theme he would return to for the rest of his writing career. This book launched the “prison memoir” genre, and has been admired by many, including Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev .