Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of the author's own insignificance, this book tells the story of his tortured life. It describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'.

In a new translation by Ronald Wilks 'Notes from Underground' (1864) is a study of a single character, 'the real man of the Russian majority', and a revelation of Dostoyevsky's own deepest beliefs. One of his best critics has said of the first part that it forms his 'most utterly naked pages. Never afterwards was he so fully and openly to reveal the inmost recesses, unmeant for display, of his heart.' 'The Double' (1846) is the nightmarish story of Mr Golyadkin, a man who is haunted or possessed by his own double. Is 'Mr Golyadkinjunior' really a double or simply a fearful side of his own nature? This uncertainty is what gives urgency and horror to a tale which may be read as a classic study of human breakdown.

Details

ISBN13: 9780140455120
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 352
Edition:
Publication Date: 13 Feb 2009
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x12.8(L)x2.2(W)250
Weight (gm): 250

Author Biography

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His debut, the epistolary novella Poor Folk(1846), made his name. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with the politically subversive 'Petrashevsky circle' and until 1854 he lived in a convict prison in Omsk, Siberia. From this experience came The House of the Dead (1860-2). In 1860 he began the journal Vremya (Time). Already married, he fell in love with one of his contributors, Appollinaria Suslova, eighteen years his junior, and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. After the death of his first wife, Maria, in 1864, Dostoyevsky completed Notes from Underground and began work towards Crime and Punishment (1866). The major novels of his late period are The Idiot (1868), Demons(1871-2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He died in 1881.

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