FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Born in Moscow in 1821, he attended the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute and began his career as an engineer, but resigned after the success of his first novel, Poor Folk. He went on to write short stories and serialized novels throughout the 1840s, but in 1849 was arrested on the orders of Tsar Nicholas I due to his association with utopian Socialists. After narrowly escaping execution, he served four years with hard labor in a Siberian prison camp, and the following six years in compulsory military service. Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in 1866 with the help of stenographer Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, whom he married soon afterwards; the couple had four children together, two of whom died young. After Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky went on to write two more of his most well-received novels, The Idiot and Demons. His marriage to Anna finally helped him resolve his longtime gambling addiction, but his health gradually declined and his epileptic seizures worsened. Dostoevsky died on February 9th, 1881, four months after the publication of The Brothers Karamazov, his longest novel and arguably his magnum opus. Today Dostoevsky’s works are considered not only among the finest in Russian literature but as worldwide classics.DAVE MCKEAN has illustrated and designed over eighty award-winning and groundbreaking books and graphic novels, including The Magic of Reality (Richard Dawkins), The Homecoming, Skeletons (Ray Bradbury), Arkham Asylum (Grant Morrison, the most successful single graphic novel DC ever published), and Mr. Punch, Signal to Noise, Violent Cases, Coraline, The Wolves in the Walls (NY Times Illustrated Book of the Year), American Gods and The Graveyard Book (Carnegie/Hugo/Newberry Medal winner) (Neil Gaiman). He has written and illustrated Cages (Harvey, Pantera, Ignatz and Alph Art awards), two Pictures That Tick volumes of short stories (V+A Book of the Year), the erotic novel Celluloid, and Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash, a commission by the 14-18 Now Foundation and the Imperial War Museum. He recently received the inaugural Aragones award for excellence in comic book arts. He lives on the Isle of Oxney in Kent, England with his wife, studio manager, and musician, Clare.
