Fyodor Dostoevsky Book summary

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a renowned Russian novelist, he abandoned a promising military career in order to become a writer. Dostoevsky was born on the 30th of October 1821, in Moscow. He rose to prominence with his first short novel, Poor Folk. The novel highlighted the conditions of the poor people of Russia, and it won him the support of the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky. Dostoevsky later in life became tangled with the socialist Petrashevsky group and was sentenced to death along with the rest of the members of the group. The sentence was commuted by the Tsar, but none of the members were informed of this until the very last minute before their execution. Their punishment was commuted to a sentence of hard labor in Siberia, followed by compulsory military service. Dostoevsky drew from his own personal experience of Siberia in order to write the epilogue of this novel. Similar to the protagonist of this novel, Dostoevsky had a change of heart during his sentence and was transformed. He became deeply spiritual and drew on that feeling to craft several other phenomenal novels. Other great works by the same author are, Notes From Underground, The Gambler, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov.