Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821- 1881) was a Russian author and journalist whose novels, short stories and essays explore religious, philosophical and political aspects of the human condition, and are considered by many to be the most influential writing of the modern world, including his novella Notes from Underground , one of the earliest Existential texts. He spent a decade in the Tsarist penal system for reading banned books, including four years in a Siberian prison camp, but survived to become one of the most famous and highly regarded world writers.