Notes from Underground

A bitter, unnamed former civil servant speaks directly to the reader from his "underground" — a cramped corner of St Petersburg and of his own mind. In the first part he argues, contradicts himself and picks a quarrel with the idea that people always act in their own rational interest. In the second, he tells the story of a humiliating evening that shows how he became this way.

Short, strange and electric, it is often called the doorway into Dostoevsky's mature work and a forerunner of the existential novel. It is brief, hard to forget, and a good test of whether his voice is for you.