13 h 25 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the affection you long for brings as much fear as hope?
In White Nights and Other Stories, Fyodor Dostoyevsky draws close to dreamers, clerks, lodgers, and outsiders who struggle to be understood. During the pale summer nights of St. Petersburg, the solitary narrator of White Nights meets Nastenka. He longs for a real connection; she waits for the man she loves.
Notes from Underground turns toward anger as a former official addresses an imagined audience, exposing his own contradictions. In A Faint Heart, a young clerk's happiness in love strains under work and obligation. Polzunkov brings injured dignity into comic performance, while A Little Hero follows a boy's growing awareness of adult relationships.
What you’ll discover
- A dreamer's fragile hope Walk beside a lonely young man as imagined relationships give way to a chance meeting.
- A voice against itself Meet the Underground Man through anger, self-mockery, and arguments that expose his divided mind.
- When happiness feels frightening See how love and good fortune can deepen a young clerk's sense of unworthiness.
- Laughter with pain beneath Discover how Polzunkov's comic performance carries the weight of dependence and wounded pride.
- Feelings beyond easy answers Explore loneliness that encourages generosity, feeds resentment, or draws a person further into fantasy.
Who will love it
Readers who like inner lives, city streets at night, tender love stories, dark comedy and sharp portraits of ordinary clerks, dreamers and outsiders, all gathered in one volume of short and varied tales.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A dreamer meets a weeping girl
- Nastenka tells her story and hopes
- A spiteful man argues with the world
- Humiliation at a dinner for Zverkov
- Liza and the cruelty of a lecture
- A faint heart cannot bear its own joy
- Two small stories of calculation and ruin
- A boy falls in love and learns shame
- A miser in the corner and the shape of the book
Who’s who
- The DreamerA shy, twenty-six-year-old clerk in Petersburg who hardly knows any women and longs for a real friend.
- NastenkaA seventeen-year-old girl who lives with her blind grandmother and waits for a lodger who promised to return in a year.
- The Underground ManA bitter retired official who argues with imaginary readers and cannot stop punishing himself and others.
- LizaA young woman from Riga who meets the underground man one snowy night and listens to him more closely than he expects.
- Vasya ShumkovA frail, gentle copying clerk who is newly engaged and so full of gratitude that he cannot finish his work.
- Arkady NefedevitchVasya's big-hearted friend and roommate, who tries to cheer him up and protect him.
- Osip PolzunkovAn anxious little buffoon who tells a party the story of how he nearly married and what it cost him.
- Semyon ProhartchinA cautious, penny-saving old clerk who guards his corner and trunk, and is troubled by the rumors of his flatmates.
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- Large-print eBook
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- Audiobook
- 13 h 25 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 13 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Les Nuits blanches et autres récits
A lonely dreamer walks the white nights of Petersburg and meets a girl who weeps beside the canal.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
White Nights and Other Stories brings together seven tales by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, written in the middle of the nineteenth century. Nearly all of them are set in Petersburg, a city of canals, damp snow, small rented rooms and clerks who count every coin.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A dreamer meets a weeping girl
White Nights begins as a diary. The speaker is twenty-six and has lived in Petersburg for eight years without knowing anyone. When the city empties for the summer villas, he feels abandoned. He knows the faces on the Nevsky and the houses on the Fontanka as if they were friends, yet no one knows him.
On a late walk home he sees a girl in a yellow hat leaning on the canal railing, crying. He is too timid to speak. Then a drunken gentleman begins to follow her, and the dreamer drives him off with his stick. He offers her his arm and they walk together, both shaking.
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What is White Nights about?
White Nights is a short story told by a lonely young dreamer in Petersburg. Over four evenings he befriends a girl named Nastenka, who is waiting for a man she loves. It is a tender story of friendship, hope and longing.
What stories are in White Nights and Other Stories?
The collection holds seven tales: White Nights, Notes from Underground, A Faint Heart, A Christmas Tree and a Wedding, Polzunkov, A Little Hero and Mr. Prohartchin. They share a setting in Russia and a focus on lonely, anxious people.
What does Notes from Underground mean by the underground?
The underground is the speaker's private corner of Petersburg, and also his state of mind. He lives cut off from other people and argues endlessly with himself and with imaginary readers, so the word stands for isolation and self-torment.
The author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–1881 · Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist born in Moscow in 1821. He lived in Saint Petersburg and spent years in Siberia after his arrest in 1849. He wrote Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868–1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880). He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.
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