Notes from Underground (Everyman's Library, 271) - Hardcover

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor; Pevear, Richard; Volokhonsky, Larissa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857152719 ISBN 13: 9781857152715

Publisher: Everyman's Library Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

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."

About this title

From the Back Cover

Published in 1864, Notes from Underground is considered the author's first masterpiece - the book in which he "became" Dostoevsky - and is seen as the source of all his later works. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose acclaimed translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment have become the standard versions in English, now give us a superb new rendering of this early classic. Presented as the fictional apology and confession of the underground man - formerly a minor official of mid-nineteenth-century Russia, whom Dostoevsky leaves nameless, as one critic wrote, "because 'I' is all of us" - the novel is divided into two parts: the first, a half-desperate, half-mocking political critique; the second, a powerful, at times absurdly comical account of the man's breakaway from society and descent "underground". The book's extraordinary style - brilliantly violating literary conventions in ways never before attempted - shocked its first readers and still shocks many Russians today. This magnificent new translation captures for the first time all the stunning idiosyncrasy of the original.

From the Inside Flap

Dostoevsky?s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between 19th- and 20th- 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 One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence.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.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1857152719
• ISBN 13: 9781857152715
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 126