In 1849 the young Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years' hard labour in a Siberian prison camp for advocating socialism.
As a member of the nobility he had been despised by his fellow prisoners, most of whom were peasants - an experience shared in the book by Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a nobleman who has killed his wife.
Everyman Notes from a dead house, hardback/fyodor dostoevsky
