Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky; November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881, sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the turbulent political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia, and deal with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. Among his most acclaimed novels are Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature. Numerous literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.
Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends and books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time he left school and entered the Nikolaev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to make extra money. In the mid-1840s, he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which brought him entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted at the last minute. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several of his own magazines and later a collection of his writings, The Writer's Diary. He began traveling around Western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, leading to financial distress. For some time he had to beg for money, but in the end he became one of the most widely read and respected Russian writers.
Dostoevsky was influenced by a wide range of philosophers and authors including Pushkin, Gogol, Augustine, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, Balzac, Lermontov, Hugo, Poe, Plato, Cervantes, Herzen, Kant, Belinsky, Byron, Hegel, Schiller, Solovyov, Bakunin, Sand , Hoffmann and Mickiewicz.
Dostoevsky's work consists of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories and a number of other works. His writings were widely read in his native Russia and beyond, and influenced an equally large number of later writers, including Russians such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the emergence of existentialism and Freudianism. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and served as the basis for many films.