When this novel was published, Fyodor Dostoevsky was twenty-four years old; it was an overwhelming success: critics immediately agreed that its author was a genius, a genius, however, who lived in the deepest misery, that hopeless misery that inspires, precisely, "Poor Folk". Two young people write to each other, telling their small daily stories, their hopes, their dreams. Thus a love is born that could open the way to happiness for both of them, but their misery is such that the girl will decide to marry a man no longer young, but rich in the mad hope that she can help her unhappy friend. An epistolary novel that shook Russia and marked the beginning of the career of a titan of world literature.