read and a lecture he cherishes as he meets some of the poor folks he so accurately depicted in his first novel. A novel which could have also been his last had it not been for a last-ditch save from the firing squad by an imperial messenger, arriving with the announcement that the Tsar had commuted his death sentence to one of hard labour in Siberia as Dostoevsky is in the coach carrying him over to the firing squad. These twists of fate are ten a penny in Russian society and one may wonder what would have befell Russian literature had its most brilliant pupil indeed been killed aged 27, much the same way one can ask what would have been had Mikhail Lermontov not been killed in a duel at the exact same age in 1814. Dostoevsky is finally free in 1859 and returns to Saint Petersburg resuming his literary career, transformed by his stay in prison and last gasp survival and now expressing a strong belief in a political order based on the spiritual values of the Russian people. Misery continues as the magazine he founds (Tales of the Fatherland) is quickly banned shortly before his wife Maria Isayevna and later his older brother and confident Mikhail are taken away. Dostoevsky sinks into a gambling addiction that destroys all his finances, and starts composing his first great novel Crime and Punishment in complete poverty, drinking tea from morning to evening to quell his hunger while also attempting to