Dostoyevsky draws from his own imprisonment in Siberia to chronicle four years in a Russian penal colony in this 1862 work of fiction. The novel follows a political prisoner observing the brutal conditions and complex social dynamics among convicts from all walks of life. Translated by Constance Garnett.
In the midst of the steppes, of the mountains, of the impenetrable forests of the desert regions of Siberia, one meets from time to time with little towns of a thousand or two inhabitants, built entirely of wood, very ugly, with two churches--one in the centre of the town, the other in the cemetery--in a word, towns which bear much more resemblance to a good-sized village in the suburbs of Moscow than to a town properly so called. In most cases they are abundantly provided with police-master, assessors, and other inferior officials. If it is cold in Siberia, the great advantages of the Government service compensate for it. The inhabitants are simple people, without liberal ideas. Their manners are antique, solid, and unchanged by time. The officials who form, and with reason, the nobility in Siberia, either belong to the country, deeply-rooted Siberians, or they have arrived there from R…Continue reading →
This is the Constance Garnett translation, a public-domain English text. Marginalia presents it unabridged, with chapter navigation, your reading position saved, and optional AI commentary on any passage.
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