Notes from the Underground

Notes from the Underground is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is considered by many to be the world's first existentialist 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 Apropos 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 omniscient narrator.