Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s *The House of the Dead* is a harrowing, semi-autobiographical novel inspired by his four years in a Siberian prison camp after his 1850 arrest for political conspiracy.
Through the detached voice of narrator Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, Dostoyevsky depicts the brutal realities of prison life, hard labor, squalid conditions, and cruel inmates, while charting a profound journey of spiritual suffering and redemption.
This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by David McDuff on Dostoyevsky’s imprisonment and the novel’s origins.