He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. However, he was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle, that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into Saint Petersburg's literary circles. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. īorn in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. His 1864 novella, Notes from Underground, is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, IPA: ( listen) 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881 ), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist.ĭostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes.

The underground man fyodor dostoevsky