Notes from the Underground

A retired civil servant lives in a corner of Petersburg and spends forty pages telling the reader why every comfortable idea about reason and progress is a lie, before he consents to tell a story at all. The story, when it comes, is worse than the argument. The Gilded Library edition places paintings of snowbound Petersburg and solitary lamplit rooms beside the text, with ornament of candlestick, inkwell and a street lamp under snow.