Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks
the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and
between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most
remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former
official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In
full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive,
self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on
social utopianism and an assertion of man's essentially irrational
nature.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations
have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this
classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the
original.