Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes from Underground is a study of a single character, and a revelation of Dostoyevsky’s own deepest beliefs. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives withdraws from that society into the underground. Considered by many to be the first existentialist novel, Notes from the Underground presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.