Books like 'Notes from Underground'
Readers who enjoyed Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.55 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDeath and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Mesa Selimovic. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him... -
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Bayley
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsDostoyevsky's passionate concern for people and his intense desire to grasp the meaning of life led him to explore the secret depths of humanity's struggles and sins. No action or thought was ever too corrupt or too inhuman for his understanding. The Brothers Karamazov was his last and greatest work...Categorized as:
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When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn 19th-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era.Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him... -
Animal Farm / 1984 by George Orwell
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsThis edition features George Orwell’s best-known novels—1984 and Animal Farm—with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith joins a secret revolutionary organisation called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party...Categorized as:
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 83 ratingsNew footnotes have been added, based on discoveries by the leading Soviet Dostoevsky scholar, Sergei Belov. Backgrounds and Sources, highly praised in the Second Edition, remains unaltered. Included are a detailed map of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, selections from Dostoevsky's notebooks and letters, and a crucial passage from an early draft of his novel...Categorized as:
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Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsSet in mid 19th-century Russia, Demons examines the effect of a charismatic but unscrupulous self-styled revolutionary leader on a group of credulous followers...Categorized as:
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One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest : A Play in Two Acts by Dale Wasserman, Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsComedy Drama / 13m, 4f / Int. w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, a fierce artinet... -
Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ben Marcus
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating the author's thoughts on political philosophy, religion and above all, humanity: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead (150th Anniversary Edition)The compelling works presented in this volume were written at distinct periods in... -
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsReturning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him...Categorized as:
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Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 62 ratingsLibrarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal... -
The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg is called into his headmaster’s office for anti-Semitic remarks he made during a school speech, he is forced, as punishment, to memorize passages about Spinoza from the autobiography of the German poet Goethe. Rosenberg is stunned to discover that Goethe, his idol, was a great admirer of the Jewish seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza... -
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Cindy Sheehan
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAn immediate bestseller upon its original publication in 1939, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo is a searing portrayal of war that has stunned and galvanized generations of readers...Categorized as:
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Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsServing on a jury at the trial of a prostitute arrested for murder, Prince Nekhlyudov is horrified to discover that the accused is a woman he had once loved, seduced and then abandoned when she was a young servant girl. Racked with guilt at realizing he was the cause of her ruin, he determines to appeal for her release or give up his own way of life and follow her... -
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsHailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face to face with his own mortality...Categorized as:
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The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel...Categorized as:
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Notes from Underground & The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA single, tormented, character dominates both of these short novels written at different stages of Dostoyevsky's career..Title: .Notes from Underground the Double..Author: .Dostoyevsky, Fyodor..Publisher: .Penguin Group USA..Publication Date: .1972/06/01..Number of Pages: .287..Binding Type: .PAPERBACK..Library of Congress:...Categorized as:
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Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe most honored anthology of fantastic fiction ever published, featuring the works of such luminaries as Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Bloch, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Damon Knight, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, Frederik Pohl, Roger Zelazny and Samuel Delany... -
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, Gary Shteyngart
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsIn its adventurous happenings–its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues–A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and ’30s...Categorized as:
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The Promise by Chaim Potok
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratings“A superb mirror of a place, a time, and a group of people who capture our immediate interest and hold it tightly.” — The Philadelphia InquirerYoung Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers...Categorized as:
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The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Hugh McLean
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWith an Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B.Cook Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time...Categorized as:
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Tales and Sketches by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis Library of America volume offers what no reader has ever been able to find—an authoritative edition of all the tales and sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne in a single comprehensive volume...Categorized as:
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Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 85 ratingsSiddhartha (1922) by Hermann Hesse is a deceptively simple, intense, and lyrical allegorical tale of a man in ancient India striving for enlightenment at the time of Buddha. Siddhartha is a man whose life journey runs in parallel and who may or may not be another version of Buddha himself... -
The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks, Rajendra A. Chitnis
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings“The devil’s neatest trick is to persuade us that he doesn’t exist.”—Giovanni Papini It is a maxim that both rings true in our contemporary world and pervades this tragicomic novel of anxiety and evil set amid the horrors of World War II... -
Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGoing to the Dogs is set in Berlin after the crash of 1929 and before the Nazi takeover, years of rising unemployment and financial collapse. The moralist in question is Jakob Fabian, “aged thirty-two, profession variable, at present advertising copywriter . .Categorized as:
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Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsThe complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win...Categorized as:
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Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsOne of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate artistic expression...Categorized as:
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Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David MametA blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system...Categorized as:
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Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe classic novel, international sensation, and inspiration for the film starring Anthony Quinn explores the struggle between the aesthetic and the rational, the inner life and the life of the mind.The classic novel Zorba the Greek is the story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest... -
A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsThe last book published during Kafka's lifetime, A Hunger Artist (1924) explores many of the themes that were close to him: spiritual poverty, asceticism, futility, and the alienation of the modern artist. He edited the manuscript just before his death, and these four stories are some of his best known and most powerful work, marking his maturity as a writer...Categorized as:
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The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. "We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son," resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day...Categorized as:
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U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money by John Dos Passos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the novels that make up the U.S.A.trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—Dos Passos creates an unforgettable collective portrait of America, shot through with sardonic comedy and brilliant social observation. He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A...Categorized as:
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The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAugustus Melmotte is a foreign-born financier with a mysterious past. When he moves his business and his family to London, the city's upper crust begins buzzing with rumors about him, and a host of characters ultimately find their lives changed because of him. He sets out to woo rich and powerful investors by hosting a lavish party...Categorized as:
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Caligula by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsa new adaptation of Camus' 1944 play by Scottish playwright David... -
The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAccused of political subversion as a young man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife...Categorized as:
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The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people...Categorized as:
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The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people...Categorized as:
classics dark drama dystopia existentialism high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction -
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratings'What! to come here a stranger, a young, unknown, and unfriended stranger, and tell us, in the name of the bishop his master, that we are ignorant of our duties, old-fashioned, and useless!' Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed...Categorized as:
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Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Master and Man" (Russian: Хозяин и работник) is a story by Leo Tolstoy (1895).It happened in the 'seventies in winter, on the day after St. Nicholas's Day. There was a fete in the parish and the innkeeper, Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov, a Second Guild merchant, being a church elder had to go to church, and had also to entertain his relatives and friends at home...Categorized as:
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A Million Drops by Víctor del Árbol
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn intense literary thriller that tears through the interlocked histories of fascism and communism in Europe without pausing for breath. Gonzalo Gil is a disaffected lawyer stuck in a failed career and a strained marriage, dodging the never-ending manipulation of his powerful father-in-law... -
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsBazarov—a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man—has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia... -
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsWhite Nights, is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, this is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together...Categorized as:
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The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSet in France during the days immediately before World War II, this is the story of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy obsessed with the idea of freedom. Translated from the French by Eric Sutton...Categorized as:
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Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsUniversally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia... -
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope, John Sutherland
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe second of Trollope's "Palliser" novels introduces its title character, Phineas Finn, a talented but naive doctor's son from Ireland with Parliamentary aspirations. He must make numerous practical and ethical choices regarding his career, his political beliefs, and his romantic life, in hopes of emerging with his character, reputation, and prospects intact...Categorized as:
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Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPhilip Caputo’s tragic and epically ambitious new novel is set in Sudan, where war is a permanent condition. Into this desolate theater come aid workers, missionaries, and mercenaries of conscience whose courage and idealism sometimes coexist with treacherous moral blindness...Categorized as:
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Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsAcademics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by Moby-Dick—Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever...Categorized as:
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In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn the Penal Colony is a short story by Franz Kafka. This story is set in a penal colony with no name. The book describes the last use of a torture and execution device developed sculpting condemned the judgment against her skin before you let him die, all in the course of twelve hours... -
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsNausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him...Categorized as:
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Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsWhen the novel Brave New World first appeared in 1932, its shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future. Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy...Categorized as:
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The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDepicting both the horrors of the Holocaust and the lifetime of emptiness that pursues a survivor, 'The Shawl' and 'Rosa' recall the psychological and emotional scars of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis...Categorized as:
classics dark drama high-school historical-fiction literary-fiction religion spirituality
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