Between 1850 and 1854 Dostoevsky, imprisoned in the fortress of Omsk, Siberia, served a sentence for political reasons. Out of that experience came this text, with a strong autobiographical flavor, published between 1860 and 1862. The narrating character is a former uxoricide who, after his release from prison, is beset by memories and the need to testify. His memoir thus acquires the urgency of a live reportage: a narrative of formidable expressive power built on the succession of iconic pictures of the prison abyss. The House of the Dead is a nodal work in the production of Dostoevsky, who proves himself an unsurpassed master in investigating the dark depths of the human soul.
