Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics)

By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrated by: Peter Batchelor

Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

"Pevear and Volokhonsky may be the premier Russian-to-English translators of the era." (The New Yorker)

Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between 19th- and 20th-century fiction and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence.

In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original. This audio edition of Notes from Underground is the only recording of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation of Dostoevsky’s classic work.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s masterful translation of Notes from Underground is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English. This audiobook is skillfully narrated by Peter Batchelor.

©1993 Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (P)2020 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC

Interesting

An interesting exercise in shame, pride, justification, and rationalization. Hilarious and miserable. A good place to start reading Dostoevsky

good story, meh performance

while a decent voice, the performance is so full of moments where you barely understand the words being said and moments of random re-dubbing which really distracts from the story and narration flow

Difficult to Follow

This book is divided into two parts. Part one reads exactly as the title implies; random notes that seem to babble. This babbling, I believe is cover for several moralistic bits of wisdom that could have been easily banned by the Russian censors and never been published. The second part reads like a normal story; much easier to follow.

Bad Performance

The narrator mumbles in a british accent, making it impossible to understand if you arent reading along. Id reccomend a different version, as the translation isnt anything special.

I've never read a Dostoyevsky novel before, and tried this one because it is short and I (along with everyone) am interested in existentialism. But I found this disappointing and dull. For starters, it is way too moralistic and preachy. The first part is just a rant by some smart, narcissistic jerk that you are supposed to hate. It is fine to write about these issues, but this is suppossed to be a novel, not some philosophical paper. He needs to incorporate these ideas into a story, not just come straight out and say what he wants to say. In part 2, the characters talks about a few things he did decades ago. It is just normal every day problems, but he explains his thoughts as they are happening, which is suppossed to be dark. This technically is better than the first part in that stuff a actually happens, but again, it is telling instead of showing.

The concept is really good, but it barely even qualifies as a work of fiction for half, then is so boring.