March Book Club Discussion - Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Hello! March's book club discussion will be about the Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground".

About: Alienated from society and paralyzed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter irony, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'.

Description: Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

"Notes from Underground, with its mood of intellectual irony and alienation, can be seen as the first modern novel ... That sense of meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka, to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work" - Malcolm Bradbury

Where to Read: You can find the book through Seminole County's digital library (https://semcofl.overdrive.com/media/432972). It is also free on Amazon (https://a.co/d/9yI2sqt).