The New York Review of Books - USA (2021-11-21)

T HE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 2 7

On the 200th anniversary of the Russian writer’s birth, revisiting one of the defining moments of his life.

DAVE MCKEANis an artist and graphic novelist who recently created over 50 drawings and paintings to accompany a new edition of “Crime and Punishment.”

Sketchbook/Dostoyevsky/By Dave McKean

In his late 20s, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was arrested

for having read banned books. A death sentence

was commuted at the last moment and he was sent

instead for four years of exile in a Siberian prison

camp called Katorga.

“In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, un-

endurable cold,” he wrote. “Filth on the floors an

inch thick. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not

to behave like pigs.”

In this squalid place, he let his thoughts guide him

away from his chains, to a manor house just outside

Moscow, summer days and erotic love. “A Little

Hero” was somehow composed in the camp.

It was his time in prison that provoked a debate

with God that would inform “Crime and Punish-

ment” and the rest of his life and work, his charac-

ters trapped in cycles of self-righteous action, self-

loathing, spiritual rejection and reawakening.