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A review by lucysbookshelf
Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4.0
This is Dostoyevsky's first written novel, the one that made him known throughout Russia and consolidated him as an author, bringing his short stories and translations to the attention of many.
As a reader, I always thought there would be a before and after what Dostoyevsky lives in his imprisonment in Siberia in his writing and this novel proved me right. He was a good writer in both times, but his concerns, topics and convictions changed and his novels made that very present.
Here we have a social novel that focuses on poverty and the different problems it might bring like diseases, starvation, isolation, humiliation from fellow men, forced marriages and even death.
If it wasn't because there weren't any comic scenes, I would've thought this was a Dickens novel, something that never happened to me while reading Dostoyevsky before. His later works (after Siberia) focus on darker topics, on a fight of ideals between what's right and what's not, between faith in God and christianity and the eternal doubts a man can have of them while in distress.
This epistolary novel allows his author to show his genius, even in his debut novel, and shows ideals that will accompany him all his life, like having faith in God even when all is lost, the importance of charity and the unavoidable suffering that life brings to every human being.
As a reader, I always thought there would be a before and after what Dostoyevsky lives in his imprisonment in Siberia in his writing and this novel proved me right. He was a good writer in both times, but his concerns, topics and convictions changed and his novels made that very present.
Here we have a social novel that focuses on poverty and the different problems it might bring like diseases, starvation, isolation, humiliation from fellow men, forced marriages and even death.
If it wasn't because there weren't any comic scenes, I would've thought this was a Dickens novel, something that never happened to me while reading Dostoyevsky before. His later works (after Siberia) focus on darker topics, on a fight of ideals between what's right and what's not, between faith in God and christianity and the eternal doubts a man can have of them while in distress.
This epistolary novel allows his author to show his genius, even in his debut novel, and shows ideals that will accompany him all his life, like having faith in God even when all is lost, the importance of charity and the unavoidable suffering that life brings to every human being.