Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Notes from Underground’ is a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is considered to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator, generally referred to as the Underground Man, who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told as the underground man’s diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s ‘What Is to Be Done?’.