Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor at a hospital for the poor. He trained as a military engineer in Saint Petersburg but left the service to write, and his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was highly praised. In 1849 he was arrested for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, a group that discussed banned political ideas. He and others were sentenced to death and taken out for execution, but at the last moment their sentences were changed to hard labor. He spent four years in a prison camp in Siberia, followed by military service there. Returning to Saint Petersburg, he wrote Notes from Underground (1864) and then Crime and Punishment (1866), about a poor student who commits a murder. Debts and a gambling problem pressed him; he dictated The Gambler to a stenographer, Anna Snitkina, who became his wife. The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) explore faith, doubt, freedom and suffering. He suffered from epilepsy. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A Russian Orthodox Christian raised in a religious family. Source: Wikipedia