Amazon.com description: Product Description: The first volume of Professor Frank's masterly study of the life and work of Dostoevsky covers his early years, from boyhood and the death of his father, to his years at the engineering academy in St Petersburg, his brief career as a government draughtsman and his involvement with Petrashevsky's radical group that led to his exile in Siberia. Through a lucid examination of his early writings - in particular Poor Folk, The Double and Netotchka Nezvanova - Frank provides convincing new insights into the influences that later shaped Dostoevsky's most important works.