What follows is a translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” that does two things in particular: 1) aims to recreate the energy of the original, 2) happens in the 21st century.

The catalyst for its creation was simple — seeing countless out-of-context badly translated quotes from the novella, as well as generally solemn “philosophical” aura around it. The book is, on contrary, a comedy, but archaic translations completely bury its manic, self-contradictory energy, so it becomes ...