Notes from underground /
Written in 1864, this classic novel recounts the apology and confession of a minor nineteenth-century official, an account of the man's separation from society, and his descent "underground."
| Uniform title: | Zapiski iz podpolʹi͡a. |
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| Author / Creator: | |
| Other Authors / Creators: | Pevear, Richard, 1943- Volokhonsky, Larissa. |
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English Russian |
| Imprint: | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. |
| Series: | Everyman's library ;
no. 271. |
| Subjects: | |
| Retention: | Retained for Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust (EAST) http://eastlibraries.org/retained-materials |
| Online Access: | Publisher description |
| Summary: | Written in 1864, this classic novel recounts the apology and confession of a minor nineteenth-century official, an account of the man's separation from society, and his descent "underground." Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man's essentially irrational nature. |
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| Physical Description: | xxxi, 126 pages ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (page xxiii-xxiv) |
| ISBN: | 1400041910 9781400041916 1857152719 9781857152715 |
| Author Notes: | In 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested for being a part of a revolutionary group that owned an illegal printing press. He was sentenced to be executed, but the sentence was changed at the last minute, and he was sent to a prison camp in Siberia instead. By the time he was released in 1854, he had become a devout believer in both Christianity and Russia - although not in its ruler, the Czar. During the 1860's, Dostoevsky's personal life was in constant turmoil as the result of financial problems, a gambling addiction, and the deaths of his wife and brother. His second marriage in 1887 provided him with a stable home life and personal contentment, and during the years that followed he produced his great novels: Crime and Punishment (1886), the story of Rodya Raskolnikov, who kills two old women in the belief that he is beyond the bounds of good and evil; The Idiots (1868), the story of an epileptic who tragically affects the lives of those around him; The Possessed (1872), the story of the effect of revolutionary thought on the members of one Russian community; A Raw Youth (1875), which focuses on the disintegration and decay of family relationships and life; and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which centers on the murder of Fyodor Karamazov and the effect the murder has on each of his four sons. These works have placed Dostoevsky in the front rank of the world's great novelists. Dostoevsky was an innovator, bringing new depth and meaning to the psychological novel and combining realism and philosophical speculation in his complex studies of the human condition. (Bowker Author Biography) |