About the book: 2011 / "Dostoevsky is what Russia is like, with all its darkness and light. And he is Russia's greatest contribution to the spiritual life of the whole world." These are the words of N. Berdyaev, but other researchers of the work of the great writer, who discovered such abysses of good and evil in the human soul that all previous world literature could not imagine, also agree with them. Dostoevsky's great works fully reflect his fate - the mysterious death of his father, years of poverty and spiritual quest, hard labor and soldiering for participation in a revolutionary circle, a difficult ascent to fame, which made him - both during his lifetime and posthumously - the object of both enthusiastic praise and fierce attacks. The details of the writer’s life, even the most unknown and “inconvenient” ones, are fully reflected in his new biography, written by Lyudmila Saraskina, a famous literary historian, author of fifteen books dedicated to Dostoevsky and his contemporaries.