All Formats & Editions

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes relevant writings by Dostoevsky, among them "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," the author's account of a formative trip to the West. New to the Second Edition are excerpts from V. F. Odoevksy's "Russian Nights" and I. S. Turgenev's "Hamlet... Read Full Overview

Notes from Underground is considered one of Dostoyevsky's most powerful and original stories and marks the starting point of his literary maturity.

Notes from Underground is widely considered the forerunner of modernist literature and one of Dostoevsky's greatest literary achievements. The novel recounts the thoughts and encounters of a civil servant known only as The Underground Man who has quit his job and lives in a basement... Read Full Overview

"It may seem paradoxical to speak of such insights as liberating, or to find in the Underground Man's impassioned rejection of rational humanitarianism a call to arms. Yet each age we live through as individuals demands a certain kind of book- just as each era thieves the... Read Full Overview

Notes from the Undergroundis recounted from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who describes himself as sick, spiteful, and unattractive. His thoughts and his moods veer unpredictably as he reflects on the folly of idealism and the reality of human squalor and degradation... Read Full Overview

One of the most profound works of modern literature, 'Notes from Underground' (first published in 1864) remains a cultural and literary masterpiece. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is best known for his psychological works of fiction. His characters and plots all carry psychosomatic troubles... Read Full Overview

'I am a sick person. I am a spiteful person. An unattractive person, too . . .'

Darkly fascinating short novel depicts the struggles of a doubting, supremely alienated protagonist in a world of relative values. Embraces moral, religious, political, and social themes. Authoritative Constance Garnett translation. New introduction.

About Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground

"The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts that hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are... Read Full Overview

I say, in earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment-the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness... Read Full Overview