The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia

About the book

Papers left by Alexander Petrovitch provide the frame for an account of years spent at hard labour in Siberia. Rather than organising everything around a single escape or confrontation, the narrative attends to the texture of confinement: work, money, illness, punishment, festivals, and the effort to preserve a private sense of self. Fellow prisoners appear as individuals with histories and incompatible temperaments, resisting the simplicity of an official category. Moments of ordinary sociability can acquire unusual force within a restricted world. The fragmentary form asks readers to accumulate an understanding across encounters instead of expecting one incident to explain the whole institution. This edition also includes an introduction by Julius Bramont, which can be read separately from the framed prison narrative.

• Confinement
• Human dignity
• Institutional power

Why read it

For sustained attention to individual lives within a system that tends to describe people collectively.

English text · Introduction by Julius Bramont