Fyodor Dostoyevsky is considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. Born in Moscow in 1821, he began adulthood by resigning a commission as a military engineer to embark on a writing career. The praise he earned for his first novel, Poor Folk, immediately vaulted him to literary stardom. His political activity led to imprisonment, a mock execution, and exile to a Siberian prison camp, all of which shaped his later novels. Since his death in 1881, he has been best remembered for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.