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Notes from Underground

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The monologue of a retired official who lives shut away in a St Petersburg cellar. In the first part he attacks faith in reason, progress and the utopians' 'crystal palace': man prefers his caprice to his interest, and two times two makes four is the beginning of death. In the second, 'Apropos of the Wet Snow', he recalls his humiliations and his cruelty to the prostitute Liza. It is regarded as the founding text of literary existentialism.