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Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November 1821. He had six siblings and his mother died in 1837 and his father in 1839. He graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering in 1846 but decided to change careers and become a writer. His first book, Poor Folk, did very well but on 23rd April 1849 he was arrested for subversion and sentenced to death. After a mock-execution his sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia where he developed epilepsy.He was released in 1854. His 1860 book, The House of the Dead was based on these experiences. In 1857 he married Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. After his release he adopted more conservative and traditional values and rejected his previous socialist position. In the following years he spent a lot of time abroad, struggled with an addiction to gambling and fell deeply in debt. His wife died in 1864 and he married Anna Grigoryeva Snitkina. In the following years he published his most enduring and successful books, includingCrime and Punishment (1865). He died on 9th February 1881.
Dostoevsky contends with Tolstoy for the title of being the greatest Russian novelist. Although his work exhibits less narrative drive than that of Tolstoy, he demonstrates immeasurably greater psychological insight, especially into the minds of the unbalanced. Crime and Punishment is a novel which can change the reader's life. Unexpectedly readable, with occasional bizarre humour, it takes a theme of great simplicity - Student Raskolnikov kills a pawnbroker and her sister and is then torn apart by his conscience - and endows it with extraordinary surprises, each one more consistent with character than a more conventional solution might have been. A clash of very different people thrown together in an unusual circumstance produces, at length, a sense of inevitability and resolution. Strongly recommended to all cocksure murderers and self-satisfied policemen, among others. (Kirkus UK)
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