Notes from Underground and the Double

A predecessor to such monumental works as "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov," "Notes From Underground" represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives withdraws from that society into the underground. A dark and politically charged novel, "Notes From Underground" shows Dostoyevsky at his best. In Dostoyevsky's "The Double" we see an intense psychological study of its main character Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a government clerk who becomes obsessed with the idea that a fellow clerk has taken over his identity. "Notes From Underground" and "The Double" are two of Dostoyevsky's more popular shorter works, which exhibit the author's uncanny ability to portray the darker side of the human psyche.