Notes from the Underground

Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrated by Jonathan Keeble

Notes from the Underground is Dostoevsky’s early masterpiece and is one of the first examples of existentialist literature.

Dostoevsky’s narrator is the anonymous voice of the masterful novella. Retired and isolated from society, he is bitter, contemptuous, and contemplative as he presents his anecdotes and philosophical outlooks. Presented as an extract from the narrator’s memoirs, Notes from the Underground is divided into two parts. Opening with a monologue attacking Western philosophy, Dostoevsky follows this theoretical exploration with the anti-hero’s accounts of various destructive and restorative life experiences.

First published in 1864, Notes from the Underground is an analysis of human psychology and demonstrates Dostoevsky’s sharp wit and keen understanding of the psyche.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SNR Audio
• Release date: Jun 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805360650

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian author and journalist. He spent four years in prison, endured forced military service and was nearly executed for the crime of reading works forbidden by the government. He battled a gambling addiction that once left him a beggar, and he suffered ill health, including epileptic seizures. Despite these challenges, Dostoevsky wrote fiction possessed of groundbreaking, even daring, social and psychological insight and power. Novels like Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, have won the author acclaim from figures ranging from Franz Kafka to Ernest Hemingway, Friedrich Nietzsche to Virginia Woolf.