Dostoevsky was changed by his four years in labor camp prison in Omsk. It splits his work into two halves, the early and late Dostoevsky. The later period includes all his best known work including his four “masterpieces” Crime and Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov, the Idiot and the Possessed. This is the first novel he wrote upon his release from prison, and it is a book very much based on his experiences there.
It is told as if edited by a schoolteacher who found an older man’s notes. The notes tell stories of the prison life and speaks a lot about class differences. Nothing really happens, and it is more a declaration of events, including encounters with animals, the changing seasons, different inmates. I have long wanted to read this book as i have an interest in historical accounts of prison life. I have also read prison accounts by Sergei Dovlatov and Ted Conover, in addition to having perused Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov and Silvio Pellico. A good auxiliary resource on the Tsar’s labor camps in the 19th century is historian Daniel Beer’s book that takes its name from this volume by Dostoevsky.
Kinship of all Species 