Often considered a primary forerunner of existentialist philosophy, Notes from
the Underground is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, written in the form of a memoir
by its central, unnamed character, a former civil servant in St. Petersburg
struggling with dark psychological issues.
ANNOTATION
Written in 1864, this novel is the first and strangest of Dostoevsky's
masterpieces--and the source of those that followed. Violating literary
conventions in ways never before attempted, this classic tells of a
mid-19th-century Russian official's breakaway from society and descent
"underground."