Fyodor Dostoevsky
1821–1881 2 entries
Biography
Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist whose books explore the depths of the human soul, faith, guilt and freedom. Born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor, he trained as a military engineer in Saint Petersburg but soon gave it up for writing, and his first novel, Poor Folk, made him famous overnight in 1846. In 1849 he was arrested for belonging to a circle of young freethinkers and sentenced to death; on the scaffold, at the last moment, the sentence was commuted to four years of hard labour in Siberia, followed by years of army service.
The prison camp, his epilepsy and his gambling debts marked his life and his work. After his return he wrote, often racing against deadlines, the great novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, helped by his second wife, Anna, who took down his dictation in shorthand. His characters argue about God, suffering and freedom with a passion that influenced philosophers and writers from Nietzsche to Camus. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881, a few months after finishing The Brothers Karamazov.
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