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It is from this period on that his writing career really started. Two important works stand out: Notes from the Underground and House of the Dead.
Both are novellas and are strongly influenced by the time he spent in exile. Compared with his earlier works these 2 novellas are much more somber. In fact Poor folks and The Insulted and the Injured have often been compared (rather incorrectly) to romance novels. Not so with Notes from the Underground. If you must read just one work from Dostoyevky, read Notes from the Underground. It is a short novella, but in it the concept of the "antihero", so dear to the author is expanded and Dostoyevsky takes his place as one of the world's greatest writer and thinker.
It is also during this period that Dostoyevsky became addicted to gambling. Pursued by creditors he and his wife (he wed Anna in 1867) immigrated to Europe.They returned to Russia only 4 years later in 1871.
It is after his return to Russia, that Dostoyevsky wrote his greatest and best-known novels.
These are:
Crime and Punishment, the story of a murderer, his guilt, capture and atonement.
The Idiot: The story of a "perfect man", prince Myskin, an innocent unable to cope and survive modern society.
The Demons: Dostoyevsky most political novel, where he criticizes the revolutionaries of the 1860's
Brother Karamazov: His greatest novel, a social, religious, and philosophical comment on society and man.
Dostoyevsky died of a lung hemorrhage complicated by an attack of epilepsy at the age of 59 in 1881.
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