The House of the Dead

A fictionalised account of life in a Siberian prison camp, drawn from Dostoevsky's own years of hard labour. It is narrated by a man sentenced for a crime, who describes the daily routines, the harsh conditions, the holidays and punishments, and the many kinds of prisoners around him. Observant and humane, the book gives a rare view into the lives of convicts in nineteenth-century Russia and reflects on freedom, cruelty and the endurance of the human spirit.