In this almost documentary account of his own experiences of penal servitude in Siberia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor and the degradation, in relentless detail. The inticate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Turgenev to passages from Dante's Inferno. Terror and resignation - the rampages of a pyschopath, the brief serence interlude of Christmas Day - are evoked by Dostoevsky, writing several years after his release, with a strikingly uncharacteristic detachment. For this reason, House of the Dead is certainly the least Dostoevskian of his works, yet, paradoxically, it ranks among his great masterpieces. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. In this almost documentary account of his own experience of penal servitude in Siberia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor, the degradation, in relentless detail - even down to the intricate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters. The steam-bath scene itself, where the livid branded bodies seem to burn in the fires of Hell, is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Trugenev to passages from Dante's 'Inferno.' Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest Russian writers, whose works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century fiction.