The House of the Dead and Poor Folk

The House of the Dead and Poor Folk, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is part of the Barnes and Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes and Noble Classics: All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes and Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader’s understanding of these enduring works. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a secret group of radical utopians, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years in a Siberian labor camp—a terrible mental, spiritual, and physical ordeal that inspired him to write the novel The House of the Dead. Told from the point of view of a fictitious narrator—a convict serving a ten-year sentence for murdering his wife—The House of the Dead describes in vivid detail the horrors that Dostoevsky himself witnessed while in prison: the brutality of guards who relish cruelty for its own sake; the evil of criminals who enjoy murdering children; and the existence of decent souls amid filth and degradation.