This collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of
Dostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short
story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes as in his
longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romantic
White Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of
pathos and loss, to the famous Notes from the Underground, a story
of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromising cynicism, and the first
major work of existential literature. Among Dostoevsky's prototypical
characters is Yemelyan in The Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on
an inability to resist crime. Presented in chronological order, in David
Magarshack's celebrated translation, this is the definitive edition of
Dostoevsky's best stories.