The Idiot three prisoners were tied to stakes facing the firing squad: Dostoevsky was among the next in line. Just as the first shots were about to be fired, a message arrived from the Tsar commuting the sentences to hard labor in Siberia. The experience had a profound effect on Dostoevsky, and in Part 1 of "The Idiot" (written twenty years after the event) the character of Prince Myshkin repeatedly speaks in depth on the subject of capital punishment. On one occasion, conversing with the Epanchin women, he recounts an anecdote that exactly mirrors Dostoevsky's own experience. A man of 27, who
The Double (Dostoevsky novel) however, its idea was rather lucid, and I have never expressed in my writings anything more serious. Still, as far as form was concerned, I failed utterly." Vladimir Nabokov, who generally regarded Dostoevsky as a "rather mediocre" writer called "The Double" "the best thing he ever wrote," saying that it is "a perfect work of art." The story was adapted into an English play of the same name, which was later adapted into a 2013 film of the same name, starring Jesse Eisenberg. The Double (Dostoevsky novel) The Double (, "Dvoynik") is a novella written by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was