The Russia of the mid 19th century was a period in which the society was awash with a myriad of philosophical ideas as it became increasingly influenced by the West. The writer instinctively reacts against Utopian ideals and sees in himself the proof that such a philosophy is doomed.

Notes from Underground, also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

A predecessor to such monumental works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side.

In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground.

Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is a composite of the tormented clerk and the frustrated dreamer of his earlier stories, but his Notes from the Underground is a precursor of his great later novels and their central concern with the nature of free will. Initially musing on his “sickness” and the detested notion of self-interest, the maladjusted and willful Underground Man turns to a series of incidents from years earlier.

A predecessor to such monumental works as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoevsky's writing towards the more political side. In this work we follow an unnamed narrator who is disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives and withdraws into the underground. Notes from the Underground shows Dostoevsky at his best.

By the time Dostoevsky was 40, he had spent four years in prison and a further four years in the army as punishment for his part in a political conspiracy. His health was broken. He was gaunt, fervid, anxiety-ridden, and close to bankruptcy. It was in this state he wrote Notes from the Underground, a masterpiece of the psychology of theoutsider.

A groundbreaking new translation of Dostoyevsky's most radical work of fiction. In the depths of a cellar in St. Petersburg, a 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 in Dostoyevsky's most extreme and disturbing character, there is the uncomfortable flicker of recognition of the human condition. When the narrator ventures above ground, he attends a dinner with a group of old school friends.

A predecessor to such monumental works as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from the Underground represents a turning point in Fyodor Dostoevsky's writing toward the more political side. In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground.

In "Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, we are not talking about revolutionary personalities, a secret struggle for some ideas or about a curtain of secrets and mysteries. The hero of the "underground", the author of the notes, is a collegiate assessor who retired after receiving a small inheritance. He lives poorly, in a wretched room on the outskirts of Petersburg. And the "underground" is psychological.

Notes from the Underground is an 1864 existentialist novella written by the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The speaker, an unknown yet common type of man, writes in first person about his views on Western philosophy, as well as his stark analysis of his own life. The work is written as the ramblings of this retired government employee who seems to have a very pessimistic yet honest opinion on his own life, as well as the world as seen through his eyes.