Notes from the Underground

In 1864; just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels — Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover; the novel introduces themes — moral; religious; political and social — that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the Underground; then; aside from its own compelling qualities; offers readers an ideal introduction to the creative imagination; profundity and uncanny psychological penetration of one of the most influential novelists of the nineteenth century. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here; with a new introduction.