Notes from Underground & The Double

fyodor dostoevsky jessie coulson

‘It is best to do nothing! The best thing is conscious inertia! So long live the underground!’Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky’s groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the ‘ant-hill’ of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence ‘underground’. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him – his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulson’s introduction discusses the stories’ critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksy’s great novels.

Genres classicsfictionrussiarussian literaturephilosophyliterature19th centurypsychologynovelsliterary fiction

287 pages, Paperback

First published January 29,1864

This edition

Format: 287 pages, Paperback
Published: July 30, 1972 by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780140442526
ASIN: 0140442529
Language: English

About the author

fyodor dostoevsky

Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский (Russian)

Works, such as the novels Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), of Russian writer Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky or Dostoevski combine religious mysticism with profound psychological insight.

Very influential writings of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin included Problems of Dostoyevsky's Works (1929),

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky composed short stories, essays, and journals. His literature explores humans in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century and engages with a variety of philosophies and themes. People most acclaimed his Demons(1872) .

Many literary critics rate him of the greatest of world literature and consider multiple highly influential masterpieces. They consider his Notes from Underground of the first existentialist literature. He also well acts as a philosopher and theologian.

(Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский) (see also Fiodor Dostoïevski)