Reading room

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Fyodor Dostoevsky

'A Fantastic Story' from A Writer's Diary (April 1877). A man who has decided to shoot himself rebuffs a little girl begging for help in the street; that night he dreams he kills himself and is carried to another planet, a sinless earth whose inhabitants he corrupts by his mere presence. On waking he gives up suicide, seeks out the girl and devotes himself to preaching love. It is his most concentrated religious parable.