Notes from the Underground

The late 19th century was a dynamic period for literature, and one of the most significant writers at that time was Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose Notes from Underground is considered by many to be the very first existential work of fiction. Published in 1864 in his native Russian (the first English translation would come much later in 1918), one of Dostoevsky’s most controversial narrators rambles, contradicts himself and bitterly describes his defiant, self-imposed isolation from society. The novella has two parts, and within those dual sections Dostoevsky presented to the world one of the first mature works of literary realism.