Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

I say, in earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment-the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.

From Dostoevsky's earliest novel, follow the complicated mind of a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the mid 19th century. The ramblings of the unnamed narrator run the gamut from human morality, to logic and reason, to an unattainable human utopia. A great introduction to Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground brilliantly precedes his lengthier later novels, such as Crime and Punishment.