Crime and Punishment

His wife and brother had died, the magazine he and his brother had started collapsed under its load of debt, and Dostoyevsky was threatened with debtors prison. Under such circumstances, he could have remained in Wiesbaden, but instead he chose to flee to Russia. After borrowing money, he pawned his clothes and begged friends for loans, even offering to take a job as a lowly copyist if they would give him a stake so that he could get home. Upon arriving in Russia, he wrote the novel Crime and Punishment, which catapulted him to fame as one of Russia's greatest writers.