Notes from Underground and the Double

Gripping new translations of two harrowing psychological novels by the Russian master

The two novels of inner turmoil brought together here mark a turning point for Dostoyevsky, and are among his most personally revealing. The anonymous narrator of Notes from Underground (1864) tells of his refusal to become a worker in the "ant-hill" of society and of his gradual withdrawal to an underground existence. A classic study of human breakdown, The Double (1846) tells of a man haunted by his double-or is it just the fearful side of his own nature? Both are universal testaments of human despair, made vibrant in masterly new translations.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), one of nineteenth-century Russia’s greatest novelists, spent four years in a convict prison in Siberia, after which he was obliged to enlist in the army. In later years his penchant for gambling sent him deeply into debt. Most of his important works were written after 1864, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, all available from Penguin Classics.

Ronald Wilks studied Russian language and literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later Russian literature at London University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1972. He has also translated ‘The Little Demon’ by Sologub and, for Penguin Classics, My Childhood, My Apprenticeship and My Universities by Gorky, The Golovlyov Family by Saltykov-Shchedrin and four volumes of stories by Chekhov: The Kiss and Other Stories, The Duel and Other Stories, The Party and Other Stories and The Fiancée and Other Stories.