Notes from the Underground (Annotated with Critical Essay and Biography)

Book excerpt: Notes from Underground (also translated in English as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, though "Notes from Underground" is the most literal translation) is an 1864 short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. 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. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?.