Author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, interrogator of the soul
A giant of Russian literature, the most profound interrogator of the soul. Sentenced to death for joining a revolutionary group and reprieved at the last instant before execution, then sent to Siberian exile, this near-death and hard-labor experience made him stare all his life into the darkest abyss of human nature. Crime and Punishment writes the torment of conscience of a poor student after a murder; The Brothers Karamazov, through three brothers, questions God, freedom, and evil. He wrote not the calm everyday but the extreme struggle of the human on the edge of faith, madness, and redemption — one source of the modern psychological novel.
The young Dostoevsky was bound to the scaffold, awaiting the firing squad, until at the last moment came the tsar’s reprieve to exile. That minute of near-death stayed with him all his life. Ever after, his characters stand at the cliff-edge of life and death, sin and redemption — because he had truly stood there himself.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.