Fyodor Dostoyevsky
From an analysis of religious ideas in Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Demons (The Possessed), and The Brothers Karamazov, James Townsend thinks Dostoyevsky held orthodox Christian beliefs except for his view of salvation from sin. According to Townsend, "Dostoevsky almost seemed to embrace an in-this-life purgatory", in which people suffer to pay for their sins, rather than the Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ. Malcolm Jones sees elements of Islam and Buddhism in Dostoyevsky's religious convictions. Colin Wilson in The Outsider describes him as a "tormented half-atheist-half-Christian".