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work. Nabokov, who is otherwise critical of Dostoyevsky, had this to say about 'The Double' (this comment also answers Belinsky's criticism of prolixity):
"The very best thing he [Dostoyevsky] ever wrote seems to me to be 'The Double'. It is the story - told very elaborately, in great, almost Joycean detail ..., and in a style intensely saturated with phonetic and rhythmical expressiveness - of a government clerk who goes mad, obsessed by the idea that a fellow clerk has usurped his identity. It is a perfect work of art, that story. "

Prison and After.

In 1849 Dostoyevsky was arrested as a ringleader along with some other particularly fervent members of the Petrashevsky group. Originally the group was a reading group, but, under the leadership of N.A. Speshnev, several members decided, "to realize a coup in Russia".

The group were charged and found guilty of revolutionary activities and sentenced to be shot. Dostoyevsky:
"Today, December 22nd, we were all taken to Semyonovsky Square. There the sentence of death was read out to us, we were all made to kiss the cross, a sword was broken over our heads, and we were told to put on our white execution shirts. Then three of us were tied to the posts to be executed. I was the sixth, and therefore in the second group of those to be executed.... Then the retreat was sounded on the drums, those tied to the posts were taken back, and an order from His Imperial Majesty [Nicholas 1] was read to us granting us our lives. Afterwards our sentences were read out to us."

Dostoyevsky spent the next four years from 1850 in a Siberian prison, with little food and fewer books. These years are described in 'The House of the Dead'. Upon release he had to spend another four years in compulsory military service in another part of Siberia. It seems that this period in prison, when the only officially allowed book was the Bible, was crucial in his new philosophy. Whereas before Dostoyevsky had asked how society could be improved to lift the individual out of poverty (both financial and moral), now he saw the individual as the primary unit.

From 1853 Dostoyevsky's epileptic seizures became much more frequent, at an average of about five a year, whereas previously he had had one every two years or thereabouts. It is easy to consider these attacks as at least part of the motivation for his enthusiastic Christianity, which began in prison. For example, a friend who visited him in exile in Siberia recorded Dostoyevsky's account:
"The air was filled

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