Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor at a hospital for the poor. His mother died when he was sixteen, and when he was eighteen his father was reportedly killed by the serfs of his own estate. After graduating from the military engineering school in St Petersburg he gave up engineering for writing, and at twenty-four became famous overnight with Poor Folk. At twenty-eight he was arrested for belonging to a circle that discussed utopian socialism and sentenced to death; on the execution ground, already blindfolded, he was reprieved at the last moment by the Tsar's pardon and sent to penal servitude instead. He spent four years at hard labour in Siberia and six years as a soldier, and suffered from epilepsy all his life. Back in St Petersburg he struggled for years against gambling debts, often writing desperately to meet his publishers' deadlines. In the last fifteen years of his life he produced one great novel after another.