Notes from the House of the Dead

paperback, 344 pages

Published June 11, 2013 by Eerdmans.

ISBN:: 978-0-8028-6647-9
OCLC Number:: 818465059

Overview: Long before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago came Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead, a compelling account of the horrific conditions in Siberian labor camps. First published in 1861, this novel, based on Dostoevsky's own experience as a political prisoner, is a forerunner of his famous novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The characters and situations that Dostoevsky encountered in prison were so violent and extraordinary that they changed his psyche profoundly. Through that experience, he later said, he was resurrected into a new spiritual condition-one in which he would create some of the greatest novels ever written. Including an illuminating introduction by James Scanlan on Dostoevsky's prison years, this totally new translation by Boris Jakim captures Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical narrative-at times coarse, at times intensely emotional, at times philosophical-in rich American English.

61 editions

Mormegil@bookwyrm.social reviewed Notes from the House of the Dead by Фёдор Достоевский

Startling, heartbreaking, and funny all at the same time

5 stars

I hate to say it, but there is no doubt Dostoevsky would not have been the Dostoevsky who wrote Crime and Punishment without his time in prison.

"I was in terrible solitude, and I finally came to love that solitude. Spiritually alone, I revisited all my past life, went through everything down to the smallest detail, pondered my past, judged myself alone strictly and implacably, and sometimes even blessed my fate for having sent me this solitude, without which neither that judgement of myself nor that strict review of my past life could have been." - The Escape

And yet this book is full of so many other heartbreaking impressions, of his fellow prisoners, of the animals in prison, of so much wasted strength. My edition also included a memory of a peasant's kindness to him that brought me to tears. It, and many of the impressions in …

I hate to say it, but there is no doubt Dostoevsky would not have been the Dostoevsky who wrote Crime and Punishment without his time in prison.

"I was in terrible solitude, and I finally came to love that solitude. Spiritually alone, I revisited all my past life, went through everything down to the smallest detail, pondered my past, judged myself alone strictly and implacably, and sometimes even blessed my fate for having sent me this solitude, without which neither that judgement of myself nor that strict review of my past life could have been." - The Escape

And yet this book is full of so many other heartbreaking impressions, of his fellow prisoners, of the animals in prison, of so much wasted strength. My edition also included a memory of a peasant's kindness to him that brought me to tears. It, and many of the impressions in this book, are examples of Dostoevsky gift for capturing the real stuff of memory and the soul which make up the human experience.