Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #717549 in Books
• Published on: 1986-01-07
• Original language: Russian
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, Russian (translation)

Customer Reviews

A Documentary of 19th Century Russian Prison Camps
Dostoyevsky wrote from his heart and mostly, his suffering.

The House of the Dead, for me, was a difficult read.

The Siberian labour camps of the 19th century reveals suffering and cruelty in its true, ugly form.

Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, narrates his experience in detail and if one enters the text, understands his viewpoint and his growing learning curve to merely remain alive.

Goryanchikov's (Dostoyevskys) imprisonment was for sedition: writing about the injustices of the Romanov Dynasty. Under the Czar Alexander (whose secret police arrested Dostoevski) was later assassinated by a bomb underneath the royal carriage. Nicholas, the last Czar of Russia, witnessed his father's gruesome death. The Czar's secret police continued with even more ruthlessness, to find anyone anti-royalty: they were everywhere...and even a hint of rebellion, landed one a trip to Siberia.

What makes this text unique and fascinating is the style used by the author - an outsider looking in, a jounalist recording the cruelty, sadism and at times the kindness of human nature. There are so many interesting characters in the novel, like most Russian novels of this time period, one continually has to flick back as there are so many patronynmic's used, it is difficult to keep up...

Similar in cruelty is the book by the renowned psychiatrist, Viktor E. Frankl and his insightful text, "Man's Search for Meaning".

There seems to be many similarities between Goryanchikov and Frankl, as far as their attitude to insane crulety and one's attitude of mind, simply to survive.

A difficult read, particularly if one avoids stories about man's inhumanity to man, and the 19th century style of writing...

Frankl survived the Nazi concentration camps under conditions that would make anyone wish for death. An important book.

The House of the Dead recomended for students of lit and the curious but not the faint of heart.

The House of the Dead
You can't go wrong with Dostoyevsky. Plus you can't beat the price, it was only $3.50!!!!!

Surviving the House of the Dead
The "House of the Dead" is an early semi autobiographical work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, telling the tale of a nobleman who is imprisoned in a labour camp in Siberia for a crime of passion. The tale is semi-autobiographical because Dostoevsky as a young man was also imprisoned in Siberia for being a member of a radical political organisation an experience which was to form and influence his amazing insights and understanding of human nature.

Although not Dostoevsky greatest work "House of the Dead" is still a fascinating portrait of life in the Tsarist gulags system - a life of great hardship and deprivation yet filled with simple moments of humanity showing mankinds ability to adapt and survive in the most extreme of circumstances. Dostoevsky tells his story in a chronological order from his characters arrival as a new alienated and withdrawn noble to his gradual adjustment to prison and the return of hope as he realises that he can survive and will have a life after the completion of his term.

It is also interesting to read House of the Dead in conjunction with later works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dealing with the gulag system in communist times to see the continuation of the institution despite the changing of social regimes.