Book Description: With this second volume, Joseph Frank continues his major reinterpretation of the great novelist. Frank now goes on to the most critical period in Dostoevsky's life - the ten years between his arrest as a conspirator in late 1849 and his return to St Petersburg to resume his literary career in 1859. Frank depicts his imprisonment in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, his interrogation, his mock execution staged by Nicholas 1 and his journey to exile. The book also deals with Dostoevsky's four years in a Siberian prison camp, his life in the Russian army and his infatuation with the tempestuous and cultivated young woman who became his first wife.