Notes from the Underground

Complete and unabridged, with 100 full-page plates by Arkhip Kuindzhi, Vasily Surikov and Carl Blechen. A retired civil servant lives in a corner of Petersburg and spends forty pages telling the reader why every comfortable idea about reason and progress is a lie, before he consents to tell a story at all. The story, when it comes, is worse than the argument. The Gilded Library edition places pain...