“I am a sick man … I am a spiteful man,” a nameless voice cries out. And so, from underground, emerge the passionate confessions of a suffering man; the painful self-examination of a tormented soul; the bristling scorn of a lonely individual who has become one of the greatest antiheroes in all literature.
In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels—Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov—Fyodor Dostoevsky penned the darkly fascinating Notes from Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes—moral, religious, political, and social—that dominated Dostoevsky’s later works.
Those who are familiar with his works will immediately recognize the novel’s richly complex philosophical, political, and psychological themes; those who are not will find the best introduction to Dostoevsky’s grander masterpieces.
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“Narrator Stefan Rudnicki brings his pleasingly gravelly voice and considerable skill to Dostoevsky’s antiheroic short novel…He demonstrates intelligence and professional ability throughout…He brings enough but not too much emotion to a book that is mostly a highly charged tirade interspersed with bitter and painful dealings with others. An adept, understated performance of a troubling but important book.”
— AudioFile
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart had a profound and universal influence on the twentieth-century novel. He was born in Moscow, the son of a surgeon. Leaving the study of engineering for literature, he published Poor Folk in 1846. As a member of revolutionary circles in St. Petersburg, he was condemned to death in 1849. A last-minute reprieve sent him to Siberia for hard labor. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1859, he worked as a journalist and completed his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, as well as other works, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.