Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow, the son of a tyrannical doctor subsequently murdered by his serfs. After studying engineering, Dostoevsky published his first novel, Poor Folk, in 1846 to great acclaim. Two years later, however, he was sentenced to death for being a member of a secret intellectual society seen as anti-Czarist. While actually standing before the firing squad, Dostoevsky was given a last-minute reprieve, and sent instead to prison in Siberia for ten years. His novels and the political journals he edited would rankle authorities for the rest of his life. This, plus devastating gambling debts, led him to frequently flee to Europe, even as he composed masterworks such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. He died in St. Petersburg in 1881.