Notes From the Underground

Notes from Underground (Russian: Записки из подполья, Zapiski iz podpol'ya), also translated in English as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, though Notes from Underground is the most literal translation (1864) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Although Søren Kierkegaard is considered the father of existentialism, he mostly wrote non-fictional philosophical and theological treatises, essays and discourses; the Notes is considered by many to be the world's first existentialist fictional novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called "Àpropos of the Wet Snow," and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying, and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator.