Classic Book Reader
Cover of Notes from the Underground

Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)

  • Free to read
  • 3 hours to read
  • 22 chapters
  • Reading level: 7th grade

"Notes from the Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a novella published in 1864. This confession-style narrative follows a bitter, isolated former civil servant in St. Petersburg known as the Underground Man. Through philosophical monologues and personal anecdotes, he attacks determinism and utopian ideals, arguing that humans need suffering and irrationality to maintain freedom. He obsesses over past humiliations and social encounters, embracing spite and inaction while despising the rational self-interest that he believes has trapped him in unhappiness.

Read free now No app, no sign-up. Your place is saved automatically. Or download for your e-reader ↓
  • Political fiction
  • Russia · History · 1801-1917
  • Russia · Officials and employees

Read the opening

Chapter I

I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well—let it get worse!

Keep reading Notes from the Underground →

Contents

  1. Part I: Underground
  2. Chapter I
  3. Chapter II
  4. Chapter III
  5. Chapter IV
  6. Chapter V
  7. Chapter VI
  8. Chapter VII
  9. Chapter VIII
  10. Chapter IX
  11. Chapter X
  12. Chapter XI
  13. Part II: À Propos of the Wet Snow
  14. Part II: À Propos of the Wet Snow
  15. Chapter I
  16. Chapter II
  17. Chapter III
  18. Chapter IV
  19. Chapter V
  20. Chapter VI
  21. Chapter VII
  22. Chapter VIII
  23. Chapter IX
  24. Chapter X

Download for your e-reader

Files are provided by Project Gutenberg. On a Kindle, the simplest route is to send the EPUB with Amazon’s Send to Kindle. Downloaded copies don’t sync with your place on Classic Book Reader.

About this edition

This free edition of Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #600, released 1996-07-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Novels, Russian Literature.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

More by Fyodor Dostoyevsky