about the authorBom in Moscow, Russia, in l82l, Fyodor Dostoyevsky led a very unsettled life. When his mother died, his father sent Fyodor and his brother Michail to an army engineering school. But Fyodor did not like engineering, and he tumed instead to art and literature.At the age of twenty-five, Dostoyevsky published his first novel, Poor Folk. This immediately made him famous, and he became the darling of Russia. But during this time he had also joined a group of revolutionaries who were caught and sent to prison in Sibcria. After four years at hard labor and several more years in the anny, Dostoyevsky had plenty of material to use for future novels.Among Dostoyevsky's greatest works are Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. Although these and other novels brought him wealth, he could never manage to enjoy it. He was a gambler, a troublcmaker, a man who always acted before he thought, yet he was also a loving father and brother, and a very generous person. His health had never been good, however, so that between his sickness and his difficult life, he seemed to grow old very quickly. Dostoyevsky died in 1881 at the age of sixty. He is known as one of Russia's greatest writers.