"I am ashamed of my poverty, ashamed of my miserable clothes, ashamed of myself."
Written in epistolary format, Poor Folk (1846) was Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first published novel, a raw and intimate portrait of life lived on the margins of society.
It tells the story of a tragic relationship between an impoverished government clerk and a young seamstress, told through the passionate letters they write to each other sharing their daily struggles, small joys and quiet heartbreak. Their words reveal a world of poverty and humiliation, yet also a tenderness that defies despair.
Through the fragile bond between Makar and Varvara, Poor Folk examines poverty in St Petersburg, class pressure, moral struggle, the corrosive shame of poverty, and the sustaining power of human connection.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer renowned for his profound explorations of psychology, morality, and the human condition. Born in Moscow, his tumultuous life was marked by early literary success and followed by arrest and exile due to his radical political activities. He is widely regarded as one of the world's finest novelists, penning classics that include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. His work has had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction and his ideas have profoundly shaped literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology, and literary criticism.
