In the original dustsheet. Red cloth binding with gilt title on the spine and front board.

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The story opens with the narrator taking in a lodger, an old soldier named Astafy Ivanovich, at his apartment. One day, a thief steals the narrator’s coat, and Astafy pursues him unsuccessfully. Astafy is dismayed by the theft and goes over and over the scenario. The narrator and Astafy share a distinct contempt for thieves, and one-night Astafy tells the narrator a story of an honest thief that he had once known.

One night in a pub, Astafy Ivanovich happened upon Emelyan Ilyitch. The two knew each other previously, but from the look of his tattered coat, Emelyan had fallen on hard times. He was aching for a drink but had no money. Astafy, moved by Emelyan’s pathetic position, had bought him a drink. From then on, Emelyan followed Astafy everywhere, eventually even moving into his apartment. Astafy did not have much money himself, but he allowed Emelyan’s imposition because he was very aware that his drinking was a terrible problem. Emelyan would not stop his drinking, however, and even though he was quiet and not disruptive when he was drunk, Astafy could see that Emelyan would never be able to support himself with such a habit. Astafy urged him to stop drinking, but to no avail. Eventually, Astafy effectively gave up on him and moved, never expecting to see Emelyan again.

Very soon after Astafy had moved, Emelyan appeared at his new apartment, and the two continued to go on as they had before. Astafy would support Emelyan with food and lodging, and Emelyan would always go out and come back drunk. Sometimes he would disappear for days only to return drunk and almost frozen.

Astafy, now working as a tailor, was short on money. One of his projects, a pair of riding breeches for a wealthy customer, was never claimed. He thought he could sell the breeches to get money for more useful clothes and some food, but he then discovered that they were nowhere to be found. Emelyan was drunk as usual and denied the theft. Astafy was terribly vexed by the theft and kept looking for the breeches while still suspicious of Emelyan. Emelyan always denied the theft.

One day, Astafy and Emelyan had a terrible fight over the breeches and Emelyan’s drinking. Emelyan left the apartment and did not return for days. Astafy even went to look for him, but with no success. Eventually, after a couple of days, Emelyan returned, almost starved and frozen. Astafy took him back in, but it was clear that Emelyan’s days were numbered. Days later, after Emelyan’s health had deteriorated terribly, Emelyan wanted to tell Astafy something about the breeches. With his last words, Emelyan admitted to stealing the breeches.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky Russian: 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881, sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky’s literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella, Notes from Underground, is one of the first works of existentialist literature. Numerous literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.

Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into Saint Petersburg’s literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer’s Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers.

Dostoevsky was influenced by a wide variety of philosophers and authors including Pushkin, Gogol, Augustine, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, Balzac, Lermontov, Hugo, Poe, Plato, Cervantes, Herzen, Kant, Belinsky, Byron, Hegel, Schiller, Solovyov, Bakunin, Sand, Hoffmann, and Mickiewicz.

Dostoevsky’s body of work consists of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and served as the basis for many films.