Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Penguin Classics (1986), Paperback, 368 pages
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: In 1849, renowned Russian thinker and novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to execution for his subversive political beliefs. As he awaited his turn in front of the firing squad, Tsar Nicholas I sent a message commuting the writer's sentence to a period of exile in Siberia. He spent the next four years there engaged in hard labor. Dostoyevsky's gripping novel The House of the Dead is based largely on his own experiences in a Siberian labor camp..
Media reviews
Opptegnelser fra det døde hus er nært knyttet til Dostojevskijs erfaringer fra tukthusoppholdet i Sibir 1850-54. Den er en merkelig kombinasjon av rapport og fiksjon, med dokumentarisk detaljerte beskrivelser av de forferdelige forhold fangene lever under, og fremfor alt en rekke portretter av
Show More
mennesker som har bragt seg selv - eller av omstendighetene er blitt bragt - på den gale siden av loven, inkludert hovedpersonen selv. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member justinmenard
I first read this in University. It really opened up my world on the Russian writers. My professor (DONSKOV), explained to us how this was partly autobiographical. Dostoevsky was in prison and writing notes in his bible. Great visual writhing.
LibraryThing member gmicksmith
This is a grim though not morbid reflection on human nature from inside a Siberian prison. Dostoevsky pointedly illustrates the lively characters contained in the novel who are motley collection of vagabonds and criminals.
LibraryThing member nichalu
one of my favourite books by this author. the story is rich with beautiful characters who we discover in the russian gulag. the story is set in a terrible place but even here people still carry on like they do in their manifold ways. fyodor tells us that participating in this diversity of human
Show More
experience is what makes life worth living. Show Less
LibraryThing member vaellus
This book is Dostoyevsky's memoir of his years in a Siberian prison camp. He did create a fictional first-person narrator for this book, but it's so weak that the narrator can't even keep up the facade enough to remember why he was sent to the camp in the first place. This book is incoherent,
Show More
meandering and disjointed but nonetheless interesting and reveals great love for humanity. It reads like a collection of sketches and short stories woven together loosely by the complete experience. This was Leo Tolstoy's favorite Dostoyevsky book. Show Less
LibraryThing member tigermel
House of the Dead, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is little book about life in a Siberian prison. A couple deep thoughts.
Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
Tyranny is a habit; it may develop, and it does develop at last, into a disease.
It
Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
Tyranny is a habit; it may develop, and it does develop at last, into a disease.
It
Show More
has such beautiful writing about such an awful subject. The basic story is that an older man dies and his friend comes across a manuscript. This manuscript is the story of the man's ten year stint in prison in Siberia. We are talking serious hard labor 1850's prison. Dozens of men sleeping on the floor, bugs, constantly wearing chains, inedible food. It is supposedly autobiographical. The prisoners survive awful conditions and beatings, yet some seem to still have optimism for the future. The only thing i have read that even seemed close was part of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King. Just haven't read much prison lit. I haven't read anything by Dostoyevsky before and his style is so poetic it is breathtaking. Show Less
LibraryThing member AnthonySchmitz
Fascinating in a couple thousand ways — among them the apparent necessity of properly motivating a Siberian convict workforce. The barking of armed guards is not enough. The guards had to define the conditions of work, at least in Dostoyevsky's telling, in terms that made the prisoners want to
Show More
stop lounging in the grass, smoking their pipes and trading insults. Once given sufficient reason to set to the task, they went at it with alacrity. Who knew that workplace psychology applied? Show Less
LibraryThing member la2bkk
I was disappointed by this work.
Any book on the inner workings of a 19th century Siberian labor camp will have appeal both for its compelling subject matter, and historical value. To that extent, I enjoyed this work, as it provides a wonderful insight into a prison system now long since
However, the author's writing style is tedious at best. The book amounts to a simple narrative of various inmates and their experiences within the camp- no real effort is made to establish flow or any compelling story lines.
Any book on the inner workings of a 19th century Siberian labor camp will have appeal both for its compelling subject matter, and historical value. To that extent, I enjoyed this work, as it provides a wonderful insight into a prison system now long since
Show More
past.However, the author's writing style is tedious at best. The book amounts to a simple narrative of various inmates and their experiences within the camp- no real effort is made to establish flow or any compelling story lines.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lee-mervin
A little slow to get started but then totally gripping
LibraryThing member greeniezona
(This is not the version of the book I read. My edition is an Oxford Classic predating ISBNs.)
Book reading in this house really slowed down here for a while, not because I wasn't reading, but because I was taking a 10 week Modern Poetry course online. I read nearly nothing else. Except this,
As it turns out, Memoirs is a strange sort of book. It's more of a series of character studies and recollections than anything with a forward-driving narrative, which contributed to the slowness with which I finished it. Whenever I was reading it, I enjoyed it, remarked on its insightfulness, pondered its ramifications for humanity in general and not just those living in a Siberian prison. But whenever I had to put it down, it was easy to leave it there -- especially during my overextended weeks of my ModPo class.
This book is remarkable both for the clarity of Dostoyevsky's descriptions and also for the amazing chasm between how prisoners are treated in this book and how they are treated now in the U.S. Not that I think modern prisoners should be flogged... But still. Everything must change.
Book reading in this house really slowed down here for a while, not because I wasn't reading, but because I was taking a 10 week Modern Poetry course online. I read nearly nothing else. Except this,
Show More
slowly. Motivated by what I felt was an underperformance on a bunch of those "How Many of These Classics Have You Read?" memes going around Facebook, I tossed this into my bag for my homecoming trip. While Memoirs wasn't on any of those lists, any Dostoyevsky should raise my book nerd cred, right?As it turns out, Memoirs is a strange sort of book. It's more of a series of character studies and recollections than anything with a forward-driving narrative, which contributed to the slowness with which I finished it. Whenever I was reading it, I enjoyed it, remarked on its insightfulness, pondered its ramifications for humanity in general and not just those living in a Siberian prison. But whenever I had to put it down, it was easy to leave it there -- especially during my overextended weeks of my ModPo class.
This book is remarkable both for the clarity of Dostoyevsky's descriptions and also for the amazing chasm between how prisoners are treated in this book and how they are treated now in the U.S. Not that I think modern prisoners should be flogged... But still. Everything must change.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jakebornheimer
So I finally got through, more or less, after dropping it once around halfway through. Woof. Given how much I loved Karamazov, C&P, and Notes from Underground, I didn't expect to feel how I felt about this one. I knew it was a prison memoir of sorts, but what I didn't account for was that it takes
"Tyranny is a habit; it is endowed with development, and develops finally into an illness. I stand upon this, that the best of men can, from habit, become coarse and stupified to the point of brutality. Blood and power intoxicate: coarseness and depravity develop; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible and finally, sweet to the mind and feelings... Power is seductive. A society that looks indifferently upon such a phenomenon is itself infected at its foundation." and,
"To acknowledge one's guilt and ancestral sin is little, very little; it is necessary to break with them completely. And that cannot be done so quickly." (p. 197)
Although he meant the above in the context of executioners and corporal punishment, the second quote speaks to me especially regarding the perception and acknowledgement of white privilege as well as decolonization. Interesting that a book from 1862 about the Siberian forced labour system can speak to me so powerfully about that.
There's also a delightfully delightful sequence about his dogs. So there's that.
Old hiatus review:
Putting this on hiatus for a moment. The first ~150 pages are good - it's very interesting to learn about the russian/siberian prison system, but there is virtually no plot to keep me engaged. I'll come back to it later because Dostoevsky is a good writer but there are more interesting things right now.
Show More
the form of a series of rambling impressions with the system with little or no plot between episodes. But given that the individual stories are not isolated enough, the book doesn't have even the strength of a good book of short stories. It really does show that this was one of Dostoevsky's first works, that's for sure. It's really a two star book, but i'll add an extra star for some choice quotes, which i'll type up here:"Tyranny is a habit; it is endowed with development, and develops finally into an illness. I stand upon this, that the best of men can, from habit, become coarse and stupified to the point of brutality. Blood and power intoxicate: coarseness and depravity develop; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible and finally, sweet to the mind and feelings... Power is seductive. A society that looks indifferently upon such a phenomenon is itself infected at its foundation." and,
"To acknowledge one's guilt and ancestral sin is little, very little; it is necessary to break with them completely. And that cannot be done so quickly." (p. 197)
Although he meant the above in the context of executioners and corporal punishment, the second quote speaks to me especially regarding the perception and acknowledgement of white privilege as well as decolonization. Interesting that a book from 1862 about the Siberian forced labour system can speak to me so powerfully about that.
There's also a delightfully delightful sequence about his dogs. So there's that.
Old hiatus review:
Show Less
LibraryThing member janerawoof
Fascinating semi-autobiographical novel of Dostoyevsky and his years as a political prisoner in Siberia. He writes as "Alexander Petrovich" and these are "Alexander"'s thoughts and impressions of prison life under Nicholas I. Each chapter is a separate vignette, complete in itself. The convicts are
Highly recommended.
Show More
given sharp psychological portraits. We see their interaction with each other and the prison authorities. We get a taste of the daily routine, Christmas and Easter celebrations, such as they are, the prison animals, an escape, protesting with a complaint, and finally, after years as a convict, freedom at last for the narrator. Highly recommended.
Show Less
Awards
Prix Langlois (1964)
Language
Original language
Russian
Original publication date
1860
1862
Physical description
368 p.; 5.3 inches
ISBN
0140444564 / 9780140444568