Notes from the Underground (1863)

Notes from the Underground is recounted from the perspective of a narrator who describes himself as sick, spiteful, and unattractive; he styles himself ""the Underground Man."" His thoughts and his moods veer unpredictably as he reflects on himself and his world; on past, present, and future; on the folly of human idealism and the reality of human squalor and degradation. The intellectual and psychological power of the book are deeply rooted in the conflicts and contradictions that afflict the narrator-many of which seem to have afflicted Dostoevsky himself for much of the 1860s. Once attracted to idealistic and utopian notions, he now found himself repelled by them. A passionate advocate of freedom, he had little confidence that humans could use freedom for the good. The Underground Man is not a unified self, but a self-contradictory character, like his author. His bewildering complexity and relentless self-analysis make him one of the most memorable and thought-provoking protagonists of modern literature. As well as the text itself and an informative introduction, this new edition includes a selection of background documents (also newly translated), which help set the work in the cultural and intellectual context out of which it emerged.