'I am a sick person. I am a spiteful person. An unattractive person,too . . .'In the depths of a cellar in St. Petersburg,a retired civil servant spews forth a passionate and furious note on the ills of society. The underground man's manifesto reveals his erratic,self-contradictory and even sadistic nature. Yet Dostoyevsky's disturbing character causes an uncomfortable flicker of recognition,and we see in him our own human condition.
Publisher: Canongate BooksISBN: 9781786899002Number of pages: 160Weight: 113 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 9 mmEdition: Main - Canons reissue
MEDIA REVIEWS
This excellent Canongate Canons edition has an enlightening and entertaining introduction by DBC Pierre...Dostoevsky chips away at complex human motivation with persuasive stylistic tools,succeeding in being hilarious and heart-rending in a single sentence (after all,"mankind is a comical construction"),captured in this beautiful translation by Natasha Randall. It's through elegantly excavating the particularities of his era that Dostoevsky strikes upon timeless truths,and with perspicacious analysis of behaviour,tunnels through to hidden depthsDostoyevsky's Underground Man...is perhaps the greatest reliably unreliable narrator in world fictionThe most unflinching study of self-loathing in the literary canonNotes From Underground established Dostoevsky's reputation as the most innovative and challenging writer of fiction in his generation in RussiaNotes from Underground is still a modern book; it still can kickDostoyevsky is one of the few psychologists from whom I have learned somethingNotes From Underground,with its mood of intellectual irony and alienation,can be seen as the first modern novel...That sense of the meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's workAn author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery,sin,vice,the depths of lust and crime,rather than to nobility of body and soul...(Notes From Underground is) an awe- and terror-inspiring example of this sympathyNotes From Underground transcends art and literature,and its place is among the great mystical revelations of mankind...It cannot be recommended to those who are not either sufficiently strong to overcome it or sufficiently innocent to remain unpoisoned. It is a strong poison,which is most safely left untouchedOne of the most revolutionary and original works of world literature
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
An undisputable giant of Russian fiction,Fyodor Dostoevsky remains one of the most widely read Russian writers,best known for iconic novels Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov.
Visit the Fyodor Dostoyevsky author page
Kommentar