Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground (also translated in English as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld) (1864) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as Underground Man), a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The novel is divided into two rough halves. The first half takes the form of a philosophical manifesto, in which the middle-aged narrator explains his theory that humans inflict unnecessarily, irrational pain on themselves and others as an expression of free will. In the second half, Underground Man recalls three of the major events of his life as a young man: his nursing of a lengthy grudge against a military officer who probably didn't even know Underground Man existed; a humiliating dinner with some old schoolfriends; and an attempt to induce a nervous breakdown in a young prostitute.

Like many of Dostoevsky's novels, Notes from Underground was unpopular with Soviet literary critics due to its explicit rejection of socialist utopianism and its portrait of humans as irrational, uncontrollable, and uncooperative. Many existentialist critics, notably Jean-Paul Sartre, considered the novel to be a forerunner of existentialist thought and an inspiration to their own philosophies.