Poor Folk — Fyodor Mihayloviç Dostoyevski

Dostoevsky s first novel Poor Folk was passed before publication to a legendary critic blowhard called Vissarion Belinsky who promptly declared that Dostoevsky was the heir to Gogol This was nonsense Poor Folk is a mawkish tale that would have been forgotten had the same author not also written Crime and Punishment et al Still the 24 year old Fedya D was suddenly feted everywhere as the new literary genius of St Petersburg