Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Notes from Underground is an novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called "Àpropos of the Wet Snow," and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator. Like many of Dostoyevsky's novels, Notes from Underground was unpopular with Soviet literary critics due to its explicit rejection of utopian socialism and its portrait of humans as irrational, uncontrollable, and uncooperative.

Genres: Classics

110 pages, Paperback

Published May 19, 2012

About the author

Alternate spelling, see main profile Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reviews

[Medy]

The most wattpad experience ever, the author got ran over by a bus and said he would update the next chapter later.

it has been CENTURIES and bro still hasn't updated.

[Andrew Prendergast]

Very red pilled, but Dostoevsky is probably the best author in human history.