Poor People

As both a masterpiece of Russian populist writing and a parody of the entire genre, Poor People is an early example of Dostoevsky's genius. Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical "man of the underground," he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches. This work is remarkable for its vivid characterizations, especially of Dievushkin, the clerk, solely by means of his letters to the young girl and her answers to him. "On this excellent audiobook, the epistolary format is well presented by the single-voiced first-person readings of Cullen and Emlen. Both readers express the hopeless love and rage that the two correspondents capture in their heartfelt letters." -- Kliatt Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-81) was born in Moscow, the son of a surgeon. Leaving the study of engineering for literature, he published Poor Folk in 1846. As a member of revolutionary circles in St. Petersburg, he was condemned to death in 1849 befor as last-minute reprieve sent him to Siberia for hard labor. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1859, he worked as a journalist and completed his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, as well as other works, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Patrick Cullen, a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he continues to live and work in the theater.