My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life? It is a poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer. It is one of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries — including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

'I could see that she was still terribly afraid, but I didn't soften anything; instead, seeing that she was afraid I deliberately intensified it.' In this short story, Dostoyevsky masterfully depicts desperation, greed, manipulation and suicide. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). Dostoyevsky's works available in Penguin Classics are Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Double, The Gambler and Other Stories, The Grand Inquisitor, Notes From The Underground, Netochka Nezvanova, The House of The Dead, The Brothers Karamazov and The Village of Stepanchikovo.

Dostoyevsky's revolutionary work, was a major influence on James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Notes from the Underground is celebrated as the first existentialist novel; it is the starting point for the sense of meaninglessness that runs through much of twentieth-century writing, including that of Kafka and Beckett. Dostoevsky's most revolutionary work is comprised of the rambling memories of a bitter unnamed narrator who has withdrawn entirely from society into an underground existence. It is a probing and speculative analysis of the political and philosophical questions that were pertinent in Russia and Europe during the mid-19th century.

The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact petty revenge on an officer who has shown him disrespect and a dramatic encounter with a prostitute. Seen by many as the first existentialist novel and showcasing the best of Dostoevsky's dry humour, Notes from under the Floorboards was a pivotal moment in the development of modern literature and has inspired countless novelists, thinkers and film-makers.

Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying-clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka, Poor People brings to the fore the underclass of St Petersburg, who live at the margins of society in the most appalling conditions and abject poverty. As Devushkin tries to help Varenka improve her plight by selling anything he can, he is reduced to even more desperate circumstances and seeks refuge in alcohol, looking on helplessly as the object of his impossible love is taken away from him.

In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see firsthand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting Russia. Over the course of his journey he visited a number of major cities, including Berlin, Paris, London, Florence, Milan, and Vienna. His impressions on what he saw, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, were first published in the February 1863 issue of Vremya (Time), the periodical he edited.

When the ageing Russian Prince, Prince K., arrives in the town of Mordasov, Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, a doyenne of local society life, takes him under her protection, with the aim of engineering his marriage with her twenty-three year old daughter Zina. Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly. The gossiping and rumour-mill of the country village are deftly captured in Dostoevsky's mock-heroic tone. A rare foray into comedy by the giant of Russian literature, Uncle's Dream nonetheless still possesses all the hallmarks of Dostoevsky's psychological and philosophical writing.

A classic by a Russian master Prince Myshkin, the idiot, is an almost comically innocent Christ figure in a land of sinners, one whose faith in beauty contrasts sharply with that of his society's.

A rich and idle man confronts his dead mistress's husband in this psychological novel of duality. One of the esteemed Russian author's most powerful and accessible tales, it employs his favorite themes of mental torture and neurosis. Captivating and highly revealing, it explores love, guilt, and hatred.

Dostoyevskys masterpiece introduces a world filled with greed, passion, depravity, and complex moral issues, as three brothers become involved in the brutal murder of their own father. This edition features an Afterword by bestselling author Sara Peretsky. Revised reissue.

The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, believing he is exempt from moral law, murders a man only to face the consequences not only from society but from his conscience, in this seminal story of justice, morality, and redemption from one of Russia's greatest novelists.

This brilliant work by one of Russia's foremost novelists teems with greed, passion, depravity, and complex moral issues. Three brothers, involved in the brutal murder of their despicable father, find their lives irrevocably altered as they are driven by intense, uncontrollable emotions of rage and revenge.