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The House of the Dead and The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky Translated by Constance Garnett With an introduction by A. D. P. Briggs. The House of the Dead is a stark account of Dostoyevsky's own experience of penal servitude in Siberia. In graphic detail he describes the suffering of the convicts their squalor and degradation, their terror and resignation, from the rampages of a psychopath to the brief serenity of Christmas Day. Amid the horror of labour in the sub-zero work camp, we hear the stories of the prisoners, and live through the freezing isolation and pain of day after day of misery. We see a young intellectual forced to live, eat and sleep with men from a background of cruelty, coarseness and brutality. The Gambler is set in a spa town with its casino and international client. Alexey Ivanovitch is a young tutor in the household of a general. He is both observer and actor in the tempest which surrounds his impoverished employer, as he envies and mocks the airs and pretensions of his supposed superiors. Everyone is waiting for the death of Granny, the general's rich aunt, but so far from dying, she turns up alive and well, and makes her way to the casino . . . Review: Great book - Good price, quick delivery. Review: Five Stars - nice edition














| Best Sellers Rank | #485,906 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #247 in Russian & Soviet Literature (Books) #4,344 in Psychological Fiction (Books) #10,038 in Classic Literature & Fiction |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 215 Reviews |
B**B
Great book
Good price, quick delivery.
S**E
Five Stars
nice edition
A**R
Five Stars
Fast service, no problems.
M**S
Muy bien
En perfecto estado
L**H
grande lettura
Romanzi brevi e racconti. La traduzione inglese (Garnett) mi costringe a leggere più attentam. Dostoevky è unico, tra i Tragici Iliade Dante Shakespeare , Non c'è una sola parola che non sia essenziale, tutto è denso e vero .Una stupefacente avventura. ...Vantaggio di traduzione inglese è che non mi accorgo delle sbavature di lingua, che invece mi sembra di avvertire spesso in quelle italiane .Considero, forse a torto, la maggior parte dei traduttori come i doppiatori utili ma insopportabilmente tutti uguali, che si sono inventati una lingua robotica artificiale fortunatamente (ancora) inesistente nel mondo reale, ovviamente mi aspetto di sentire tra non molto il doppiatese , come già il giornalistese, a pranzo e cena.. That's entropy, honey!
M**H
"Life is impossible without hope"
Just brilliant!, as a ex con myself, Dostoevsky's descriptive articulation of the prisoners experience(in tsarist Russia) in the house of the dead is timeless. A great insight for those who have not had the misfortune of incarceration. Highly recommend for that book alone but you get the Gambler too! Another great (and brief) story of the human condition, traversing the entirety of its spectrum from its worst to its best, something this writer and Tolstoy were masterfully skilled in.
A**ー
The wisdom of a call to nuance
So far it’s been an interesting window into a world (I hope) I’ll never see. Very glad to be able to reap the benefit of the wisdom Dostoyevsky brings out of the Siberian prisons. He emphasizes how mistaken the idea is that criminals are fundamentally different from everyone else. Their hearts are scarred and laden with the burdens of their mistakes, but they are still people. The prison is overflowing with the convict’s expressions of humanity toward each other. The only one who seem perhaps beyond hope is the superintendent of the prison, for he is convinced the prisoners are fundamentally different from him, and he treats them accordingly, as subhuman. Here, Dostoyevsky calls us to have a more mature and nuanced view of humanity, something that is much needed in a day when ideologies have made nuance a rare commodity.
A**R
Five Stars
A good read.
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