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Notes from Underground

By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Notes from Underground is a fictional collection of memoirs written by a civil servant living alone in St. Petersburg. The man is never named and is generally referred to as the Underground Man. The “underground” in the book refers to the narrator’s isolation, which he described in chapter 11 as “listening through a crack under the floor.”

It is considered to be one of the first existentialist novels. With this book, Dostoevsky challenged the ideologies of his time, like nihilism and utopianism. The Underground Man shows how idealized rationality in utopias is inherently flawed, because it doesn’t account for the irrational side of humanity.

This novel has had a big impact on many different works of literature and philosophy. It has influenced writers like Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche. A similar character is also found in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.

Notes from Underground was published in 1864 as the first four issues of Epoch, a Russian magazine by Fyodor and Mikhail Dostoevsky. Presented here is Constance Garnett’s translation from 1918.

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2609 Reviews

4.0
Surprised Face with Open Mouth“I honestly felt sick reading it. Viscerally wanted to hurl my guts. There is indeed no quicker way to become miserable than to lose respect for yourself and become stuck in your own self-hating spiral.”

About Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (UK: Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, tr. Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Dostoevsky's body of works consists of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as multiple of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature; this has resulted in Dostoevsky being looked upon as both a philosopher and theologian as well.

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