Notes from Underground

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

Recommended by 2 people

• Jordan Peterson
• David Heinemeier Hansson: “Notes from Underground is a remarkable book, and a mercifully short one too, compared to the rest of Dostoevsky's works. I can't recommend it highly enough.”