Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1864 novella, often credited as the first work of existentialist fiction, is the monologue of a forty-year-old retired civil servant living in a cramped Petersburg flat, addressing an imaginary educated audience he assumes despises him. The first half of the book is a long, contradictory rant against the mid-nineteenth-century Russian fad for rational self-interest, the idea that people can be perfected by reason and crystal palaces. The Underground Man insists, with great agitation, that human beings will always choose to spite their own interests just to prove they are free. The second half is a memoir of three humiliations from his youth, an officer who refuses to acknowledge him on the street, a mocking dinner with old schoolmates, and a brutal encounter with a young sex worker named Liza, that show exactly what his philosophy looks like in practice. The book is the seed of Dostoevsky's later great novels.
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What you might want to know about Notes from Underground
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An unnamed bitter ex-civil-servant in St. Petersburg writes a long monologue about pride, freedom, and his own inability to act, then tells the story of a humiliating dinner party with old schoolmates and a meeting with a young woman.
Yes. Notes from Underground is a short novel (around 130 pages) but stylistically demanding, structured as the bitter monologue of an unreliable narrator. Most readers either embrace the voice or find it alienating.
Yes. Notes from Underground was first published in 1864 and is in the public domain. Free editions of older translations are available through Project Gutenberg. Modern translations remain copyrighted.
Notes from Underground was written by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Notes from Underground is a standalone novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, not part of a series.
Notes from Underground is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
