Notes from Underground and The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Notes from Underground and The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Collected here in Penguin Classics are two of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's shorter works, Notes from Underground and The Double, translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by Robert Louis Jackson. Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter irony, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who looks exactly like him - his double, perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly tragicomic study of human consciousness. Ronald Wilks's extraordinary new translation is accompanied here by an introduction by Robert Louis Jackson discussing these pivotal works in the context of Dostoyevsky's life and times. This edition also contains a chronology, bibliography, table of ranks and notes on each work. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow. From 1849-54 he lived in a convict prison, and in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His other works available in Penguin Classics include Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot and Demons. If you enjoyed Notes from Underground and The Double, you might like Dostoyevsky's Demons, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Notes from Underground, with its mood of intellectual irony and alienation, can be seen as the first modern novel . That sense of meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka, to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work' Malcolm Bradbury

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His first story 'Poor Folk' was published in 1846 and was a great success. He was exiled to Siberia for five years for his participation in the 'Petrashevsky Circle'. He returned to Moscow to begin the review 'Vremya' (Time). Later in life he fell deeply in debt but his second marriage to Anna Snitkina helped him to put his affairs in order. He died in 1881, six months after delivering his famous speech for the unveiling of Pushkin's memorial.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780140442526
ISBN 10	0140442529
Title	Notes from Underground and The Double
Author	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	1972-07-30
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.