Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the 2nd of 7 children. From 1849 to 1854 he lived in a convict prison, and in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. In 1880 he delivered his famous address at theunveiling of Pushkin's memorial in Moscow; he died six months later in 1881. David McDuff has translated a number of works for the Penguin Classics, including The Idiot, Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov, and Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories.