Notes from a Dead House

<p> In 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for participating in a socialist discussion group. The novel he wrote after his release based on notes he smuggled out not only brought him fame but also founded the tradition of Russian prison writing.<i> Notes from a Dead House </i>(sometimes translated as <i>The House of the Dead</i>) depicts brutal punishments feuds betrayals and the psychological effects of confinement but it also reveals the moments of comedy and acts of kindness that Dostoevsky witnessed among his fellow prisoners. <br> To get past government censors Dostoevsky made his narrator a common-law criminal rather than a political prisoner but the perspective is unmistakably his own. His incarceration was a transformative experience that nourished all his later works particularly <i>Crime and Punishment</i>. Dostoevsky's narrator discovers that even among the most debased criminals there are strong and beautiful souls. His story is finally a profound meditation on freedom: The prisoner himself knows that he is a prisoner; but no brands no fetters will make him forget that he is a human being. <p/></p>