Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Worlds Classics) [Paperback]

Fedor M. Dostoevsky (Author), Ronald Hingley (Editor), Jessie Coulson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 1983 | Series: Worlds Classics

In this almost documentary account of his own experience of penal servitude in Siberia, renowned Russian writer Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts in relentless detail. Written several years after his release, with a strikingly uncharacteristic detachment, MEMOIRS FROM HOUSE OF THE DEAD ranks among Dostoevsky's greatest masterpieces.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

About the Author

Fedor Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest Russian writers, whose works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century fiction.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 7, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192816136
• ISBN-13: 978-0192816139
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,524,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Siberia with Love: A memoir of a frozen prison hell by the great psychological novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, May 9, 2007

By 

C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) wrote "From the House of the Dead" in 1860. It is a fictionalized account of the four years (1850-54) he spent in a penal colony in distant Siberia. Dostoyevsky had been sentenced due to his involvement in a plot to assasinate the Tsar. Following his imprisonment he served in the Russian army; returned to European Russia writing such classics as "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime and Punishment."

"From the House of the Dead" is a lesser known but still classic account of the torment of the prisoner's life in a totalitarian state.

We learn the horror of labor in the subzero work camp; the stories of several of the prisoners; animals who lived in the area and the freezing isolation and pain of countless days of misery. Dostoyevsky was a young intellectual forced to live, eat and sleep with men who came from a peasant background of cruelty, coarseness and brutality. Many of the camp's officials were sadistic and cruel in their treatment of the wretches whose lives they ruled with an iron fist.

Dostoyevsky is able to look through the keyhole of the human soul in all its multifaceted complexity. His descriptions of the bleak landscape is journalistic in its detail.

I have always loved Dostoyevsky's major novels. This was a new one for me and I am glad I read it. I consider it imperative perusing for anyone who wants to know what kind of man Dostoevsky was. In the last lines of the book he reports the main character's release from prison with the promise of a return to urban life in a resurrection of the spirit.

The book is not to be read with haste; it is to be savored with the many insights into life in the far north which are to be pondered to be appreciated. Long before the "Gulag Archipeligo" hit the bestseller list this great novel had told the sad and suffering tale of men trapped like mice in a mousetrip of pain.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great book, March 11, 2001

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"luderitz" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Worlds Classics) (Paperback)

I can't say that I enjoyed reading this book. It's not the sort of book that you enjoy. I can only say that I'm very glad that I read it. I found it to be both disturbing and compelling.

I can only agree with the other reviewers. This is not a book for everyone. It's not the sort of book that you read for entertainment, for something to do, for the sake of it. But if you want to be challenged and you want to be made to think, you will gain a lot by reading this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a note on the translation, August 10, 2007

By 

littlecatland "littlecatland" (MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

I wanted to say that the edition published by Oxford Press called "Memoirs from the House of the Dead" is translated by Jessie Coulson. I have no idea who Coulson was but he is an underrated Dostoevsky translator. I have read this and his "Crime and Punishment" (which is the Norton Critical edition) and I think he was much better than most of the transltors like Garnett, Ginzburg, McDuff and the rest. There are many traslations of this book available and I think this one gets left off bookstore shelves without reason. It is a very passionate translation.