An Honest Thief

By Fyodor Dostoevsky and Constance Garnett

How can there be any such thing as "An Honest Thief"? I know Astafy has stolen my coat so why can't he just admit it?'An Honest Thief' tells the story of Astafy Ivanovich, who takes up lodging in the narrator's house. When the narrator's coat is stolen, Astafy recalls the story of a thief he once gave shelter to, and a similar theft. With a careful depiction of the thief's psychological and drunken state, and the situations that he finds himself in, Dostoevsky paints a realistic picture of the human condition. His characters are always torn between what their head thinks is right and what the heart dictates. A tragic story about friendship, regret, and forgiveness.-

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9788726501247

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. Between 1838 and 1843 he studied at the St Petersburg Engineering Academy. His first work of fiction was the epistolary novel Poor Folk (1846), which met with a generally favourable response. However, his immediately subsequent works were less enthusiastically received. In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the socialist Petrashevsky circle, and subjected to a mock execution. He suffered four years in a Siberian penal settlement and then another four years of enforced military service. He returned to writing in the late 1850s and travelled abroad in the 1860s. It was during the last twenty years of his life that he wrote the iconic works, such as Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which were to form the basis of his formidable reputation. He died in 1881.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky

An Honest Thief

SAGA Egmont

An Honest Thief

Translated by Constance Garnett

Original title: Честный вор

Original language: Russian

The characters and use of language in the work do not express the views of the publisher. The work is published as a historical document that describes its contemporary human perception.

Cover image: @stanislav71/Freepik, Nojan Namdar/Unsplash and Ehud Neuhaus/Unsplash

Copyright © 1848, 2022 SAGA Egmont

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ISBN: 9788726501247

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This work is republished as a historical document. It contains contemporary use of language.

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One morning, just as I was about to set off to my office, Agrafena, my cook, washerwoman and housekeeper, came in to me and, to my surprise, entered into conversation.

She had always been such a silent, simple creature that, except her daily inquiry about dinner, she had not uttered a word for the last six years. I, at least, had heard nothing else from her.

Here I have come in to have a word with you, sir, she began abruptly; you really ought to let the little room.

Which little room?

Why, the one next the kitchen, to be sure.

What for?

What for? Why because folks do take in lodgers, to be sure.

But who would take it?

Who would take it? Why, a lodger would take it, to be sure.

But, my good woman, one could not put a bedstead in it; there wouldn't be room to move! Who could live in it?

"Who wants to live there! As long as he has a place to sleep in. Why, he would