Notes From The Underground

Volume 8 of 15 in the complete works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1864. Notes from the Underground is a 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 (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) 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. 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. Reproduced from surviving English sources, the collection of Dostoyevsky's works is simply bound for a clean and attractive appearance on the shelf, with each volume having a maroon red cover and a quote from the book on the back cover.