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The House of the Dead

A fictionalized memoir of a man serving a ten-year prison sentence for murdering his wife was written in 1861, following Dostoevsky's own four-year prison internment.

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House of the Dead is not a general account of imprisonment and system of law of Russia, ala Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, but is a much more personal account of the author's own experiences. There is no attempt to overplay or dramatize personal suffering, though there was probably ample reason for the author to do so. Instead, the author focuses more on his fellow inmates: their personalities, their culture, their way of life and way of thinking. The effect is immeasurable, and makes the House of the Dead one of the most potent, moving pieces of literature ever written. The convicts that Dostoyevsky describes seem to come alive -- their descriptions are so complete and realistic that its almost as if they're reading the book with you. This method of describing imprisonment defies conventiality, but Dostoyevsky pulls it off easily. By knowing the convicts, you feel for them, you understand them, and you walk away knowing and loving humanity just a bit more.

A great aspect of the book is that you can pick it up at almost any spot, so long as you know the general plot. I can't tell you how many times I've picked the book up and flipped straight to the first chapter describing the hospital, and read simply that alone. When Dostoyevsky tells of the dead convict, little more than a husk or a shell of a man who couldn't even stand the weight of his clothes or his wooden crucifix, being dragged off routinely with his heavy fetters still on, one can hardly help but grimace. And when another convict yells, inexplicably, "He had a mother too!" you start to sympathize for these convicts: the filthiest, most degenerate human beings you can imagine.

Its a story of love for humanity, of resurrection from despair, and of a man's final reconciliation with his own life. --Reviewer: A reader from Oregon, USA