The back cover of the Vintage edition, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, further claims that Notes from Underground is “one of the most revolutionary novels ever written” because it “marks the frontier, not only between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, but between the two centuries’ visions of the self.”Ī footnote from the author on the novella’s first page informs us that its narrator-protagonist, the nameless Underground Man, is “one representative of a generation that is still living out its life.” Here is the authoritative voice of 19th-century fiction and of 19th-century social thought-of Balzac or Tolstoy, of Hegel or Marx-the omniscient realist as social historian documenting with cool command the social panorama of the times. This 1864 novella is usually considered the prelude to Dostoevsky’s greatest novels, the first work that expresses both his mature philosophical concerns and perfects the tone of pathetic-grotesque hysterical frenzy that will characterize his most renowned books. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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