A wonderful mostly fictional account of life in a Siberian prison. Dostoyevsky's narrator offers insights not only into historical prison conditions and practices, but into universal reactions of prisoners to their jailors, to each other (class divisions separate and isolate upper class prisoners from the rest), to their pets (some of which are killed for food or fur), to the duration of their sentences and to the prospects for escape. Reading his account of inmates' high hopes for escaped fellow prisoners, my mind was drawn to Cool Hand Luke, so universal are the reactions of men of all times.

A fascinating read, but because of its structure, nothing that stirred the soul like Crime and Punishment, thus one less star, though it deserves more.