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Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote some of his most significant works after his execution by firing squad was stayed at the last minute. http://www.history.com/this-day-i

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote some of his most significant works after his execution by firing squad was stayed at the last minute. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fyodor-dostoevsky-is-sentenced-to-death http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fyodor-dostoevsky... There is a vivid description of his experience in the novel "The Idiot", you can read it here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2638/old/20081222-2638.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2638/old/20081222-2638.txt, search for: "As to life in a prison" Or see it here with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYN40R9Hjtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYN40R9Hjtg Edit: s/began writing/wrote some of his most significant works/ (thank you dang)

dang 11y ago
> began writing Oh no, he'd published two novels before that, both significant, but for different reasons. Poor Folk was a maudlin debut but it made him the hottest new writer in Russia, briefly. Belinsky, the biggest critic of the day, famously kissed him when they were introduced. Now that he was a celebrity he thought he'd show them what he really could do, and came up with The Double, which is genius. But it bombed, and Dostoevsky became a has-been in his mid-twenties. It's still one of the best things he ever wrote, equal parts comic, tragic, and weird. It's also short, so one of the best first things to read by him. All that happened before he went to Siberia, which of course was transformative. His memoir of the prison camp, Notes From the House of the Dead, is another masterpiece and a sort of decryption key for all his later work. It was Tolstoy's favorite.