Dostoevsky had never written anything before, and Poor folk is considered one of the most sensational debuts in the history of world literature. The leading critic of the time, Vissarion Belinsky, became so enthusiastic that he spoke of the emergence of the direct heir of Puskin and Gogol', and for the 24-year-old Dostoevsky the doors of fame opened wide, albeit briefly. Poor folk is an epistolary novel that takes place over the course of nearly six months and unites in the exchange of letters a modest middle-aged official and a pretty maiden, orphaned and unprotected: poor folk, indeed, in a miserable Petersburg, with no hope or way out, where insult and humiliation are part and parcel of daily life. But in addition to the social, "natural" realism so fashionable at the time, Dostoevsky from this early work begins to experiment with the techniques of writing that would lead him to revolutionize the nineteenth-century novel, telling the reader about the torment of being a writer.
