On the day the story begins he decides to spend most of his savings on hiring a fancy carriage and a serious livery for his servant Petrushka, all so that he might look better off than he actually is. The Double tells the story of a few days in the life of one Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a poor civil servant in early 19 th century Saint Petersburg. Translations from the Russian are my own. In this case it doesn’t make for a good book, but it does at least make for an interesting one. Though Dostoevsky is very much influenced by Gogol – “We all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’” is a famous quote attributed to him – The Double is also Dostoevsky’s own work, and bears his own stamps too. Still, it’s on my Cambridge reading list because it’s shamelessly derivative of Gogol’s Petersburg Tales, which I’ve looked at here (“The Nose”) and here (“Notes of a Madman” and “Nevsky Prospekt”). It was also written before his mock-execution and years of imprisonment which led to the spiritual conversation that we have to thank for his mature work. The Double is not Dostoevsky’s best book, by any stretch, unless you’re Vladimir Nabokov ( and he’s not the best judge anyway). The Double was written and published in 1846 – before Dostoevsky suffered the imprisonment and exile that changed his life and made him the author we know today
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