{"product_id":"notes-from-the-underground","title":"Notes from the Underground","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat if you act against your own happiness just to prove you are free?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, an unnamed retired official writes from his lonely corner of St Petersburg. He is forty, proud, bitter, and hungry for respect he cannot bear to ask for. He wants readers close enough to hear his confession—and far enough away to despise.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis argument challenges the belief that reason and self-interest can build a perfect society. Then he turns to his younger self: a poor clerk caught in an obsession over an officer’s slight and drawn toward Zverkov’s farewell dinner. Among people he dislikes, his longing for recognition meets his fierce need to resist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWhat you'll discover\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eA voice without comfort\u003c\/strong\u003e – Meet a narrator whose jeers and contradictions make his confession strange, funny, and painful.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eFreedom against good sense\u003c\/strong\u003e – Follow an unsettling argument about why people choose what works against their own interests.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePride at the table\u003c\/strong\u003e – Enter a farewell dinner where old school ties offer no promise of welcome.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eLiza’s plain honesty\u003c\/strong\u003e – Encounter a young woman whose feeling for others contrasts with the narrator’s bitter isolation.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIdeas put under pressure\u003c\/strong\u003e – Watch abstract claims about human will take shape in a younger man’s painful encounters.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerfect for readers who enjoy bold, uneasy voices, ideas argued through a character, or a short way into Dostoyevsky.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOpen the first page now and meet a man who turns even his own confession into an argument.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Library of Alexandria Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59534571176284,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1027\/9442\/8764\/files\/00632_en_ebook-front_c19.jpg?v=1792174903","url":"https:\/\/libraryofalexandria.com\/products\/notes-from-the-underground","provider":"The Library of Alexandria","version":"1.0","type":"link"}