1. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Although afflicted by lifelong seizures, Dostoevsky’s closest brush was death came about as a result of his early association with liberal radicals, with whom he shared his writing and discussed politics. Arrested at the age of 28 during a raid and given the “silent treatment” in prison for eight months (the guards even wore velvet-soled boots), he was sentenced to death.

In rows of three, Dostoevsky was lined up with the other prisoners and marched towards the execution grounds. Just before the fatal order was given, an official arrived waving a white flag — the Tsar had decided to stay their execution. Instead, Dostoevsky would serve four years of hard labor in Siberia, followed by an obligatory stint in the Russian Army.

This incident is said to have increased the frequency and severity of Dostoevsky’s epileptic fits, but the young writer also channeled the experience into his work, evident from this passage in The Idiot:

He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a most interminable period, an enormous wealth of time; he seemed to be living, in these minutes, so many lives that there was no need as yet to think of that last moment, so that he made several arrangements, dividing up the time into portions — one for saying farewell to his companions, two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking over his own life and career and all about himself; and another minute for a last look around….

The repugnance to what must ensue almost immediately, and the uncertainty, were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea, “What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return to life again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should grudge and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant”' He said that this thought weighed so upon him and became such a terrible burden upon his brain that he could not bear it, and wished they would shoot him quickly and have done with it.