Poor Folk
Бедные люди
A great book. First published AD 1846, written in Russian
Poor Folk, sometimes translated as Poor People, is the first novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845, and first published on 15 January 1846. Dostoevsky was in financial difficulty because of his extravagant lifestyle and his developing gambling addiction; although he had produced some translations of foreign novels, they had little success, and he decided to write a novel of his own to try to raise funds.
Your reading
Where it is set
What it draws on
The OvercoatGreat book
Nikolai Gogol, AD 1842
Dostoevsky's first novel picks up Gogol's poor copying clerk. Makar Devushkin, a clerk himself, reads The Overcoat and is hurt by it, and the book answers Gogol by giving such a man an inner life and a voice of his own.
