by Fyodor Dostoevsky

isbn: 0553211447
subject: Fiction and Literature
finished: 8/13/1999

The narrator of this book is a bundle of contradictions: he loathes himself and is constantly ashamed, yet he is enormously egotistical. He is intelligent, yet incapable of seeming intelligent, or acting intelligently. If Notes From Underground is painful to read (and it is), it's because there are qualities of its unhappy narrator in all of us. Dostoevsky had amazing insight into the human mind. Recommended.