Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, worked briefly as an engineer, and won entry to St. Petersburg literary circles with his first novel, Poor Folk, in 1846. In 1849 he was arrested for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, a group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, and sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence was commuted at the last moment. He served four years at a hard-labor camp in Omsk, Siberia, followed by compulsory military service; The House of the Dead (1860–62) drew on the prison years, and Prince Myshkin in The Idiot later describes a reprieve like his.

His four major novels appeared first as serials in The Russian Messenger: Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), his final novel. He wrote under steady money pressure, made worse by a gambling addiction. In 1866, with the help of the 20-year-old stenographer Anna Snitkina, he finished The Gambler in 26 days to meet a deadline with his publisher, and he married her the next year. Notes from Underground (1864) is often cited as one of the first works of existentialist literature. His fiction deals with the political, social and religious tensions of 19th-century Russia, and his books have been translated into more than 170 languages.

Start with Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, an impoverished former law student in St. Petersburg, plans to kill a pawnbroker, and the novel follows his mental anguish and moral reckoning, so its questions about guilt and justification stay tied to a single, clear plot. Translations differ considerably in tone, so compare a few opening pages before choosing an edition.

If a long novel feels like too much, begin with something short: “White Nights” (1848) is an early story built around a solitary dreamer in St. Petersburg, and The Gambler is a short novel set in a hotel and casino in a German town. Save The Brothers Karamazov, his last novel, until you know his voice.