Aufzeichnungen aus dem Totenhaus

I already had read all of his big novels, except this one. It was his first one, which actually set the tone for his later work. It features in an almost documentary style his key ideas about human nature; a short summary would be: give to the saint the same right as to the worst criminal (I took that from the cover of the book). It is also the first book about the prison system in Siberia.
Even back then under the Zsar it was mainly used as cheap labour source to conquer Siberia for Russia. This system was improved to perfection by Stalin as you can read in Stolshenizin’s books.
The central point of Dostoyevsky’s books is always the human behaviour, how can a man transgress certain limits. Dostojevsky himself was for four years in a Siberian prison, in Tobolsk. It was later reported that almost all the characters of the novel had its counterparts in real life. He literally calls the novel “Notes from the house of the dead”. And in fact it is amazing how backward Russia was at the time, where the aristocracy an higher ranked military had almost any power over their sub-ordinates. Another interesting aspect is that there were so many nations in that labour camp – Dostoyevsky mentions the nationality of almost each person – interesting!