120,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Come visit us this weekend!🚀 Auckland Bookstore • Open 7 days, 8:30am–5pm

The House of the Dead

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Penguin Classics
0.0 (0 reviews)
4.05 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating. ( 34,541 ratings, 2,904 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a semi-autobiographical novel that explores the experiences of a former nobleman sentenced to a Siberian prison camp. Through the protagonist's eyes, the narrative delves into the brutal and oppressive conditions of the penal colony and offers profound insights into the human condition, freedom, and redemption within a harsh, unyielding environment. It reflects Dostoyevsky's own time in exile, providing a compelling and affecting portrait of despair and endurance.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2400
Elsewhere:
$2600
OVERNIGHT NZ-WIDE DELIVERY

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this novel if you're fascinated by deeply personal explorations of the human spirit and keen on stories of redemption. This work offers a profound insight into the psychology of prisoners, delivering a poignant narrative that reveals the resilience and transformation of individuals in the most challenging circumstances. If you appreciate classic literature that delves into intense emotional and existential themes, this book could be an engaging read.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

In January, 1850, Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy. In this fictionalized account, he recounts his soul-destroying incarceration - the daily battle for survival, the wooden plank beds, the cabbage soup swimming with cockroaches, his strange 'family' of boastful, ugly, cruel convicts.

In January 1850 Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The four years that Dostoevsky spent in a Siberian prison camp were nasty, brutish and long, the most agonising of his life. Its documentary detail—the convicts and their fascinating stories, the wooden plank bed that they sleep on, the cabbage soup swimming with cockroaches that they eat—is made all the more vivid by the controlled, oddly impersonal tone of the narrator.

He, like the others, had stepped beyond himself to commit his crime. He found his strange family of convicts boastful, ugly, vain, cruel and ludicrously obsessed with outward appearances. But it is their vitality that overtakes the house of the dead, turning the crisis of its narrator into a slow miracle: the return and reawakening of his personality.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is often praised for its profound exploration of the human condition and the psychological depth of its characters. Readers appreciate its portrayal of life in a Siberian penal colony and the insights into suffering, redemption, and resilience. The book’s vivid illustrations of prison life and the impact on the incarcerated are highlighted as compelling, making it a significant work in Dostoyevsky's oeuvre.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780140444568

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 26 September 1985

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Classics

Contributors:

  • Translated by David McDuff
  • Introduction by David McDuff
  • Translated by David McDuff
  • Introduction by David McDuff

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 21.0mm

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 276g

Pages: 368

Collections

Best Sellers at Book Hero Classic Fiction Classic General Fiction Fiction Fyodor Dostoyevsky General Fiction In Stock Books In-Stock Fiction Books Literary Fiction New Release Fiction Penguin Black Classics Penguin Books Penguin Classics Penguin Classics: General Fiction

About the Author

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821 - 1881) studied at the Military Engineering College in St Petersburg, and achieved officer's rank. Arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death for his involvement in a political coup, he was reprieved at the last moment but sentenced to penal servitude. On his return, he fell into debt as a result of gambling. His greatest works were all written in the last 20 years of his life. David McDuff is a renowned Russian translateor and has written books and articles on Russian literature.

Also by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

View all
  • White Nights
    46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $1200
    Elsewhere:
    $1299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Brothers Karamazov
    When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov....
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $2300
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Idiot
    A new translation of Dostoyevsky's great novel of suffering and sickness. Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Dostoyevsky set out to create a protagonist with "a truly beautiful soul" and to trace the fate of such an individual as he comes into contact with the brutal reality of contemporary society. The novel begins when the innocent epileptic Prince Myshkin...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $2000
    Elsewhere:
    $2300
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Crime and Punishment
    Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a masterful psychological drama set against the gritty backdrop of 19th-century St. Petersburg. The story follows Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished and disillusioned ex-student, who roams the streets, tortured by thoughts of greatness and contempt for societal norms. Consumed by monetary woes and driven by a deluded sense of justice, he plans and executes...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $1800
    Elsewhere:
    $2100
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Crime and Punishment
    The acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's masterpiece for Penguin Classics. 'Will I really - I mean, really - actually take an axe, start bashing her on the head, smash her skull to pieces? . . . Will I really slip in sticky, warm blood, force the lock, steal, tremble, hide, all soaked in blood . . . axe in hand?...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Paperback
    $1800
    Elsewhere:
    $2100
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Demons
    A major new translation of one of Dostoyevsky's four great novels. Demons presents Pyotr and Stavrogin as the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell, with an ambitious aim to overthrow the Tsar, dismantle society, and seize power for themselves. Together, they train terrorists who are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their objectives— even if the mission means...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Notes from Underground: Popular Penguins
    The seminal work Notes from Underground: Popular Penguins by Fyodor Dostoyevsky delves deeply into the human psyche. This profound narrative introduces us to an anonymous narrator, a retired civil servant, deeply alienated from society. Feeling perpetually at odds with the world around him, he retreats to his "underground" existence, shunning social norms and despising the banalities of everyday life. The...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $1300
    Elsewhere:
    $1599
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • White Nights
    Introducing Little Clothbound Classics – irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Regarded as one of world literature's foremost novelists, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short stories are also some of the best ever written. White Nights tells of love and loss on the streets of St. Petersburg. A Nasty...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Hardback
    $2300
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Notes from Underground and the Double
    In a new translation by Ronald Wilks Notes from Underground (1864) is a study of a single character, "the real man of the Russian majority," and a revelation of Dostoyevsky's own deepest beliefs. One of his best critics has said of the first part that it forms his "most utterly naked pages. Never afterwards was he so fully and openly...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank. A delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his wife's suicide; a witness to a young girl's ruin; a writer who stretches out on a gravestone and listens...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $1799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Idiot
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot is an immaculate portrait of innocence tainted by the brutal reality of human greed. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian by David McDuff, with an introduction by William Mills Todd III. Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin—the titular 'idiot'—pays a visit to his distant...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Hardback
    $6099
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Poor Folk and Other Stories
    A collection of some of Dostoyevsky's finest short stories. With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect, and forgiveness, Dostoyevsky's early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. Poor Folk, the author's first great literary triumph, is the story of a tragic relationship between an impoverished copy clerk and...
    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Paperback
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today

More from General Fiction

View all
  • Lizzy's Pick Lizzy's Pick
    Yesteryear
    A BOLD AND BITING SATIRE. WILL HAVE YOU GASPING TO THE FINAL PAGE — Nita Prose WICKEDLY FUNNY, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND FRIGHTENINGLY PERCEPTIVE — Abigail Dean INVENTIVE, ADDICTIVE, A WILD RIDE — Ashley Audrain SHOT THROUGH WITH HUMOUR AND LACED WITH DARKNESS — Clare Mackintosh The Stepford Wives meets The Handmaid's Tale — Hannah Deitch My name was Natalie Heller...
    By Caro Claire Burke
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Dylan's Pick Dylan's Pick
    Theo of Golden
    THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING PHENOMENON'For anything to be truly good, there must be love in it. Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core.' One morning, a stranger arrives in the town of Golden. No one knows who he is or where he came from…His name is Theo and he's arrived there by chance –...
    By Allen Levi
    Paperback
    $2899
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Wedding People
    'BEST READ OF THE YEAR SO FAR' THE TIMES 'BOOKS AS FUN AS THIS ONE ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN' GUARDIAN Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people — but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall...
    By Alison Espach
    Paperback
    $2399
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses Paperback Box Set (5 books)
    All five of the Court of Thorns and Roses paperbacks packaged together in a gorgeous box set. "Passionate, violent, sexy and daring." —USA TODAY on A Court of Thorns and Roses Feyre is a huntress. The skin of a wolf would bring enough gold to feed her sisters for a month. But the life of a magical creature comes at...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Set
    $9999
    Elsewhere:
    $12495
    (4)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses
    The first instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON and TikTok sensation, from multi-million selling and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. Maas has established herself as a fantasy fiction titan – Time Harry Potter magic, Taylor Swift sass, Fifty Shades-level athleticism – The Sunday Times With bits of Buffy, Game of Thrones and Outlander, this is a glorious series...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Mist and Fury
    A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas continues Feyre Archeron's epic journey in the world of the High Fae. Having survived the brutal trials under the Mountain, Feyre returns to the Spring Court. Though she now possesses the immortal powers of the High Fae, the traumatic experiences have left scars on her human heart. Haunted by the...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Wings and Ruin
    The third instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. In A Court of Wings and Ruin, the gripping third book of the ACOTAR series, Feyre Archeron faces the ultimate battle for her world. Having returned to the Spring Court, she is determined to gather...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Frost and Starlight
    In A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas, readers are invited to revisit the enchanting world of Prythian in a heartwarming and introspective narrative. Set against the backdrop of the Winter Solstice, Feyre Archeron and her mate Rhysand return to centre stage as they strive to restore the Night Court after the devastating conflicts of A Court...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Frost and Starlight - Night Court Edition
    Limited Edition
    A Court of Frost and Starlight - Night Court Edition
    The magic and beauty of the Night Court is captured in these LIMITED EDITIONS of the Court of Thorns and Roses series! This Night Court Edition features the Night Court symbol on a striking black and silver foiled cover and includes black sprayed edges. An unmissable companion tale to the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2300
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Silver Flames - Night Court Edition
    Limited Edition
    A Court of Silver Flames - Night Court Edition
    The magic and beauty of the Night Court is captured in these LIMITED EDITIONS of the Court of Thorns and Roses series! This Night Court Edition features the Night Court symbol on a striking black and silver foiled cover and includes black sprayed edges. The latest instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2500
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Silver Flames
    The latest instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. Maas has established herself as a fantasy fiction titan - Time Think Game of Thrones meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a drizzle of E.L. James – Telegraph Spiced with slick plotting and atmospheric world-building...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Court of Wings and Ruin - Night Court Edition
    Limited Edition
    A Court of Wings and Ruin - Night Court Edition
    The magic and beauty of the Night Court is captured in these LIMITED EDITIONS of the Court of Thorns and Roses series! This Night Court Edition features the Night Court symbol on a striking black and silver foiled cover and includes black sprayed edges. The third installment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

General Fiction lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!

The Latest at Book Hero

View all