Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called "Àpropos of the Wet Snow," and describes certain events that, it seems, are... destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator. The novel is divided into two parts. It consists of an introduction, three main sections and a conclusion. The short introduction propounds a number of riddles whose meanings will be further developed.
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| Author: | Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fedor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski |
| Genre: | Novella |
| Year published: | 1864 |
| Number of editions: | 26 |