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  • “Notes from Underground” Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864) Review | From a dungeon called ego

    “Notes from Underground” Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864) Review | From a dungeon called ego

    Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics)
    Notes from Underground
    Записки изъ подполья
    Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864
    Read in 2020.07
    check synopsis and details on amazon.com


    🔽 Intro and review summary 🔽

    ✔ Earlier masterpiece from Dostoevsky
    ✔ Shorter and easier to read
    ✔ Confessions of the protagonist, philosophical fiction


    ★★★★☆ A man who is very negative, jealous, twisted, pessimistic, confused... It's short so you can finish the book before you lose your mind. Notes from a man who's locked himself in a dungeon called ego.


    🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

    Read it in Japanese translation.
    A man who is very negative, jealous, twisted, pessimistic, confused - a man who is opposite of likeable.

    It starts with a confession that can only come out of an insane person, then it moves on to something more like a story.

    It's short so you can finish the book before you start to lose your mind.
    Notes from a man who's locked himself in the underground, a dark place, a dungeon called ego.

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    🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

    ●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
    Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics)
    Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics)

    ●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
    Notes From Underground & Other Stories (Wordsworth Classics) 

    ●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
    Memorie del sottosuolo

  • “The Overcoat” Nikolai Gogol (1842) Review | Life is unfair

    “The Overcoat” Nikolai Gogol (1842) Review | Life is unfair


    The Overcoat 
    Nikolai Gogol, 1842
    Шине́ль
    Russia
    112 pages
    Read in 2024.10
    check synopsis and details on amazon.com


    ✔ Russian classic tragedy
    ✔ Life of a simple officer 
    ✔ Russian bureaucracy and frustration


    🔽 Review summary 🔽

    ★★★★☆ Life is not fair. A tragedy but also a sad comedy. Russian literature is bottomless. A man saves money for ages and buys a new coat, and it gets stolen. Regardless of time and society we live in, we share the anger and desperation.


    🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

    Short stories of the famous Gogol. 
    You do see a lot of Dostoyevsky in his stories, that the life is unfair, and stories are tragedies yet sadly comical.

    Written in this period in Russia, the stories are critical of the bureaucracy and of higher ranked officials.
    A regular official saves up to get an overcoat and gets robbed, it's simple as that, and though it's keeping it subtle it is fully miserable, and universal, we totally understand how the protagonist is feeling at every stage of the story.

    The story is ridiculous yet believable, and again universal.
    Russian literature is bottomless.
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    🔽 Where to buy 🔽

    ●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

    The Overcoat and Other Stories

    ●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
    The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Thrift Editions)

    ●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
    Il cappotto (Italiano)