Notes from the Underground

A bitter, isolated former civil servant addresses the reader from his ‘underground,’ pouring out a torrent of spite, self-loathing, and razor-sharp philosophy as he rebels against reason, science, and the idea that human beings act in their own best interest. Dostoevsky’s short, explosive novel is a founding text of existentialism, its unnamed narrator one of literature’s most compelling and disturbing voices. Fierce, paradoxical, and psychologically devastating, Notes from the Underground lays bare the contradictions of the human will and the torment of a hyper-conscious mind. Brief but bottomless, it is among the most influential works of modern thought and fiction.