Memoirs from the House of the Dead

In this almost documentary account of his own experiences of penal servitude in Serbia Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts the squalor and the degradation in relentless detail The inticate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters is an extraordinary tour de force compared by Turgenev to passages from Dantes Inferno Terror and resignation - the rampages of a pyschopath the brief serence interlude of Christmas Day - are evoked by Dostoevsky writing several years after his release with a strikingly uncharacteristic detachment For this reason House of the Dead is certainly the least Dostoevskian of his works yet paradoxically it ranks among his great masterpiecesAbout the Series For over years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features including expert introductions by leading authorities voluminous notes to clarify the text up-to-date bibliographies for further study and much more.