Notes from the House of the Dead

The story "Notes from the House of the Dead" is largely autobiographical. In it, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) artistically reflected on four years of hard labor in the Omsk prison where he was exiled for the case of the Petrashevsky Circle. The work tells about the lives of convicts, their characters, fates, and inner world. Through the perspective of the main character, the nobleman Alexander Goryanchikov, sentenced for the murder of his wife, the reader becomes acquainted with the harsh reality of convict life. Violence here becomes the norm, and hard labor breaks even the strong of spirit. The book had a huge impact on Russian literature, becoming one of the first works about prison life.