Fyodor Dostoyevsky

First published in 1862 after Dostoyevsky's imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp, "The House of the Dead" is a collection of memoirs, related by themes, that portrays the horrific life of convicts. The author drew on his own experiences in prison to depict the squalor, destitution, and severity of a Siberian camp with remorseless detail. Dostoyevsky reveals the characters of many of the other convicts, which includes the depravity many have come...

The novel "The Idiot" revolves around the central character Prince Myshkin. He is very innocent and naive, but he happens to arrive in St. Petersburg society which teems with morally corrupt and deceptive people. He continues to be compassionate towards all the people around him, but in the process he is the one who has to suffer. Eventually, he goes insane and goes back to Swiss sanitarium where he had already spent four years, being treated for...

Narrated by the character Alexei, who is addicted to gambling, this short novel is based on Dostoevsky's own experiences as a compulsive gambler. Like so many characters in Dostoevsky's novels, Alexei is trying to break through the wall of the established order and the human condition itself but instead he is drawn into the vortex of the roulette wheel.

The text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, a pronunciation and explanation key for the novels main characters, and greatly revised and expanded explanatory annotations.zContextsy presents a wealth of background and source materials relating to The Brothers Karamazov, to Dostoevskys own experiences, to current events, and to observations on a changing society.