Reception
The House of the Dead was the only work by Dostoevsky that Leo Tolstoy revered. He saw it as exalted religious art, inspired by deep faith and love of humanity. Turgenev, who was also not enamored of Dostoevsky’s larger scale fiction (particularly Demons and Crime and Punishment), described the bath-house scene from House of the Dead as «simply Dantesque». Herzen echoed the comparison to Dante and further compared the description of Siberian prison life to «a fresco in the spirit of Michelangelo». Frank suggests that the memoir-novel’s popularity with those who might ordinarily be antipathetic to Dostoevsky’s prose style, is due to the composed and neutral tone of its narration and the vividness of the descriptive writing: «The intense dramatism of the fiction is here replaced by a calm objectivity of presentation; there is little close analysis of interior states of mind, and there are marvelous descriptive passages that reveal Dostoevsky’s ability as an observer of the external world.»
Ludwig Wittgenstein considered the book Dostoevsky’s greatest work.
Editions
Fedor Dostoyeffsky (1862). Buried Alive: or, Ten Years Penal Servitude in Siberia. Translated by von Thilo, Marie. London: Longman’s, Green, and Co. (published 1881).
Fedor Dostoïeffsky (1862). Prison Life in Siberia. Translated by Edwards, H. Sutherland. London: J. & R. Maxwell (published 1888).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). The House of the Dead: or, Prison Life in Siberia; A Novel in Two Parts. Translated by Garnett, Constance. New York: The Macmillan Company (published 1915).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Notes from a Dead House. Translated by Navrozov, Lev. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House (published 1950).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Translated by Coulson, Jessie. Oxford University Press, Oxford World’s Classics (published 1983).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). The House of the Dead. Translated by McDuff, David. Penguin Classics (published 1985).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Notes from the House of the Dead. Translated by Jakim, Boris. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (published 2013).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Notes from a Dead House. Translated by Pevear, Richard; Volokhonsky, Larissa. Vintage Books (published 2016).
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). The House of the Dead. Translated by Cockrell, Roger. Alma Classics (published 2018).
Adaptations
In 1927–1928, Leoš Janáček wrote an operatic version of the novel, with the title From the House of the Dead. It was his last opera.
In 1932 The House of the Dead was made into a film, directed by Vasili Fyodorov and starring Nikolay Khmelyov. The script was devised by the Russian writer and critic Viktor Shklovsky who also had a role as an actor.
