The Double

Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

First published in 1846, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella The Double is a classic doppelgänger and the second major work published by the author. It is the story of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a government clerk who believes that a fellow clerk has taken over his identity and is determined to bring about his ruin. Considered the most Gogolesque of Dostoevsky's works, the novella brilliantly depicts Golyadkin's descent into madness in a way that is hauntingly poetic. The Double illustrates Dostoevsky's uncanny ability at capturing the complexity of human emotion, especially the darker side of the human psyche.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Apr 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781433298028

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81) was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. His most famous work includes Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. He is considered to be one of Europe's major novelists.

Reviews for The Double

[margaretfield · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

fantastic; only book I ever got to the last chapter; then read the whole thing through again before reading the last chapter.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dit was het eerste werk van Dostojevski dat ik las, op 16 jaar. Was er meteen weg van! Heb daarna bijna zijn hele oeuvre verslonden.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dit was het eerste werk van Dostojevski dat ik las, op 16 jaar. Was er meteen weg van! Heb daarna bijna zijn hele oeuvre verslonden.

[elliepotten · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked this up from the library because the new Richard Ayoade-directed Eisenberg-and-Wasikowska movie was coming out and IT LOOKED SO TRIPPILY AWESOME. The book, on the other hand (my first Dostoyevsky, no less) was... well, definitely trippy. Not that awesome, sadly. It's chaotic and fractured and although I did enjoy it, and felt very sorry for poor Golyadkin as he slowly went mad, by the end it had become so disjointed and hard to connect with him at all that I was glad to have finished it. It was only 137 pages, but it took me a long time to read because it was - purposely, admittedly - so choppy. The adaptation, incidentally, worked better for me, but I think I'm still going to need a second viewing to get my head round it!

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 1981-03-23)About how to interpret or read a text. And I am going to use 'he' as my generic pronoun because Hammett was a he.One perfectly valid way is indeed to try to stick as closely as possible to exactly what is in the text and maybe some biographic info, at least a rough knowledge of the time and space of the action, and whatever is known of the author's intentions. In some measure we MUST do thaFor the writers intentions there is a theory of the intentional fallacy: the text says what it says not what the author says it says. For example an author may think he is writing a strong female character when writing about Stella, stunningly beautiful, highly competent executive assistant to self-made billionaire Brad. In fact Stella is a male fantasy. Even the best writers can 'mean' the unintended. For example in Milton's Paradise Lost, Milton unintentionally made Satan into quite a compelling, sublimely majestic figure who made God look like a mean spirited despot. And indeed Milton's Satan evolved into a positive, if flawed, hero type, although subsequent writers were often more comfortable with the figure of Prometheus whose story in Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound is less tainted by associations with the negativity of Satan's Christian Antichrist image.Writers have lived biographies, lived through their specific times. Just like non-writers. But writers ARE writers. Literature is a vast and mighty river of the expression of being human. No writer of any worth, however innovative or creative, just creates a brand new world of Literature. What a writer reads is to a writer very similar in concept to the very times he lives through. He is living through the Literature he has read just as he has lived through the times. Of course real life may be more powerfully impressed on him such as the death of a loved one, or fighting in a war. But his reading is an important part of his life experience of his very being in the world.So if Hammet created a character which reminds one of a series of other characters going back centuries it is perfectly legitimate to discuss it in terms of Literature just as it would be to discuss the political environment of the times. Literature is fundamentally intertextual. Texts refer as much to each other as to the world. Positively and negatively. Literature is the very psychic life blood of a writer. It is an indelible inextricable part of his biography.Hammett I take to have a brilliant literary mind and to be well read in Literature. I take him to be able to know what a Byronic Hero is, what others thought about that, to have his own thoughts about it, as well as lots of other things (like about detective stories), of course. And I take him to have an idea of what a parable is and how it differs from a story, or what an archetype or double is. Take the 'double': all he has to do is READ Poe's William Wilson, or Dostoevsky’s “The Double” to get what it is as Literature. Or to read Hamlet to know how a “mise en abyme” works. He knows these things and uses them WITH THE MIND OF A BRILLIANT WRITER. A mind that processes literature not as a critic or simple reader, but as a creator of it.So if he fails to say IN the text, "Sam Spade, flawed Byronic Hero, was sitting in his office", that does not mean that Sam Spade is not a Byronic Hero type. If he creates a parable or “mise en abyme” he need not tell us that is what he is doing, nor is it particularly virtuous of us to ignore it because it isn't explicit, to ignore that he is a writer and that is the kind of thing writers do.Is Sam Spade such a figure? Maybe, maybe not. But we can look at his character and compare it to others in Literature. But just because DH doesn't say so, doesn't mean we are reading into it what is not there. Yes it is implicit, but that is about the only way it could be there. Byron too did not say: "Manfred, a Promethean archetype, was brooding on a dark and lonely crag." You have to read it INTO the text yourself. Maybe I am wrong to think DH could have written deeply conflicting archetypal characters like Brigid and Sam who are yet deeply attracted. But I think it is both possible and likely. But it is ONLY interpretation. He didn't SAY, "Into the office strolled Sam's counter archetype, Brigid".It can sound like a stretch but great literature does that all the time. What you have to do is see if there are clues in the text. Because DH DID say Sam looked like a Satan. He did create a strange and powerful emotional entanglement between Brigid and Sam and she is a corrupt devil type (Christian) and he a Satanic man of his own will (Miltonian). And so on. Did he? Maybe it isn't as impressive as I think it is, but that IS the kind of things great writers do, so why not Hammett? But I think the Sam Brigid 'love' story is sublimely brilliantly conceived and written, BECAUSE of that. Does it HAVE to just be an extremely well written noir detective novel? Not for me.At this time, you’re thinking: “Is this a review about The Double” or about “The Maltese Falcon” or "Paradise Lost"? Ah. That’s always the conundrum… If you’ve been following my reviews, you know I don’t write straightforward stuff. It’s all about Intertextuality and Close Reading for me. Coming back to “The Double” and trying to be more incisive, I really loved it, especially from the point where the doppelganger actually arrives and in the rather brilliant ending. I think that it has a problem though, which is that it's not at all what you might think before you go in, so people might go in thinking it's going to be a straightforward laugh-out-loud comedy and it really isn't and is very unsettling and complex. I would have given it 4 stars, but slightly better than “Under the Skin” for me (controversial) (I was worried at first that it was going to be a bit too "Brazil", but it just nodded and then moved on.)

[danielstj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An amazing story about obsession and paranoia. It is a psychological miasma that also reflects heavily upon Russia during the time that Dostoevsky lived in. There is so much great literary value in this. It can be interpreted many different ways, and the subtext of many of the themes that keep reiterating themselves, as if cast down by snow, are innumerable.

A thrilling read. Recommended for those interested in classics.

[tronella_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was compelling, but I'm not sure I understand what actually happened at the end...

[gbill_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Double was Dostoevsky’s second book, published in 1846, in the period of his life before being sentenced to hard labor for having been involved in the Petrashevsky circle. He had already been recognized by the important critic Belinsky for his first book, Poor Folk, but was yet to emerge from the ten-year period of penal servitude and exile in Siberia as the man who would crank out the works that he is most known for over the years 1866-1880. Sadly for Dostoevsky, The Double was criticized for being dull and long-winded, which severely hurt the sensitive young author. Happily for us, he took the criticism to heart, and twenty years later, at the height of his powers, significantly revised it. The result is outstanding. The first five chapters are stunning, and one wonders wow, where will he go with this? And it’s captivating to the last page.The Double is about the socially awkward clerk Golyadkin, self-described as “a man apart”, who is surprised on a snowy bridge one night to find his double. This double is a sort of alter ego, and it quickly becomes apparent that he is everything Golyadkin is not. He is perfect in society, acts with grace and elegance, and is the complete opposite of Golyadkin, quickly succeeding in the office and in society where Golyadkin had been frustrated. Golyadkin becomes confused, disoriented, further isolated, and backed into a corner as his standing is further reduced on all fronts, including with his servant. He reacts alternately with indecision and angst, followed by impulse and somewhat random behavior. We empathize with him but he’s artless and clumsy, constantly second guessing himself, and is never at ease. He continues to fight what seems to be a battle he can’t win, at one point feeling too “annihilated, shrunken, impotent” to go on. He becomes increasingly shunned as he tries to right wrongs that his double is perpetrating. The book is a study on several levels, and in the most obvious sense shows the struggle between the awkward, isolated individual and society with its schemers. In another sense it could be viewed as all internal, a spiritual struggle with one’s own self to keep hold of one’s principles and core identity intact. The description of events is dreamlike at times and one wonders if it’s possibly a long nightmare, or perhaps better put, allegory for the nightmare of existence, or a descent into madness. It also works straight up as an eerie, creepy tale.One can clearly see young Dostoevsky in the main character, one who was not like everyone else, those who were smooth, deft, and wore their society masks well. Golyadkin is innocent and wants to trust others, and yet is deceived, scorned, and judged at each turn. The novel is existential and well ahead of its time, prefetching Kafka. Along those lines it was interesting to me that at one point Golyadkin says that next to a tall and handsome fellow at a ball, he feels like a “real little insect”. Even the narrator feels inadequate (“Oh, if I were a poet! It goes without saying, at least such a one as Homer or Pushkin; with a lesser talent you can’t poke your nose in…”) and is also an outsider, capable of empathy and true understanding of darkness and isolation only (“It goes without saying that my pen is too weak, limp and blunt for a respectable depiction of the ball…”). And one can picture Dostoevsky looking on with a mixture of disgust and envy those who, like the double, fit into the category of being “a mischievous one, a frisky one, a crawly one, a chuckling one, fleet of tongue and foot”, and who “worm their way” through crowds and society.Great stuff, and underrated. This edition also contained 23 pages of excellent “extra material” at the end, covering Dostoevsky’s life and his works in separate sections, which I never tire of reading. Just this quote, on winter in St. Petersburg, which is described later as the “final proof of fate’s persecution” against Golyadkin:“It was an awful November night – wet, misty, rainy, snowy, pregnant with gumboils, head colds, cold sores, sore throats, fevers of all possible types and kinds – in short, with all the gifts of November in St. Petersburg. The wind howled in the deserted streets, raising the black water of the Fontanka higher than the mooring rings and plucking provocatively at the scrawny streetlights of the embankment which, in their turn, echoed its howling with the thin, piercing creaking which composed the endless, squeaking, tinkling concert so familiar to every resident of St. Petersburg. It was raining and snowing all at once. Streams of rainwater with the wind ripping through them were gushing all but horizontally, as if from a fire hose, and pricked and whipped the face of the unfortunate Mr. Golyadkin like thousands of pins and needles.”

[laurensx · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Having read and enjoyed "Crime and Punishment" years ago, I really looked forward to reading "The Double". I found, reading this book was akin to walking through sludge in a pair of bedroom slippers.Dostoevsky introduces the reader to Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin, an office worker living in Moscow. Not only are we introduced to him, but embark on an often frustrating and confusing journey through Golyadkin's mind, as he's psychologically falling apart. This mental collapse resulted in this reader feeling trapped a "maze-like" story, where twists and turns left me confused, having to reread sentences and even backing up to reread pages to see where I had become confused (and never finding the source of confusion). Dostoevsky was skillful in his manner of writing, as I can only infer, what the mind of a person who is losing theirs, endures. As I read, I felt physically bound to Golyadkin, as if tethered to him This further resulted in feeling even more constricted, confined, frustrated and confused. I don't know if Dostoevsky intended for the reader to experience such emotion and physical connection, however, it was my experience and found it brilliant, although hating it at the same time.Adding to this frustration was the constant repetition of the names. Nevermind Russian is difficult to roll off this American reader's tongue, was it really necessary to repeat names over and over, and to have to say first, middle and last each time? Perhaps this is typical of Russian dialogue during this time period, however, it added to the chaotic nature of the story.I could never determine whether "the double" was an actual person, or one drawn in Golyadkin's mind. Although other characters seemed to interact with "Junior", was it because he was real or was it Golyadkin's perception of the situation? Could this uncertainty be another of Dostoevsky's crafts, further enhancing the chaotic state of Golyadkin's mind? Whatever the case, I found it frustrating to not know, but ok with not knowing, as it fit with the story.I cannot say I enjoyed this book, as it was difficult and not comfortable or relaxing, which is why I read. It was, however, skillful and emotional, also why I read. As a book, it fulfilled its duty to escort me to another world and time, taking me on a journey I otherwise would not have experienced. In that sense, "The Double" was a worthy read.Score: 3

[missizicks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Poor Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin. I, too, long had a presentiment of his fate. What a cracking read. Dostoevsky was a master at getting across the feverish hell of madness. I couldn't not read, even though the events that befall Mr Golyadkin at the hands of his double made me uncomfortable in a similar way to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Horrific, exasperating and sad, all at the same time.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The double by Fyodor Dostoevsky was not an easy book to read. I was "lucky" in the sense that my edition (Great short works of Dostoyevsky) did not have an extensive introduction. However, as a trained philologist, one does not come entirely free from preconceptions to a literary work like this, and these preconceptions do make things easier, at least not while reading.The story is that of a clerk, whose life is "invaded" by a persona, virtually his double. Especially in the beginning, the introduction of this double is so masterly, that I experienced a loss of orientation, and switch of perspective, which made me uncertain whether I was "seeing" through the eyes of the "original" Golyadkin (later dubbed "senior") or the double (later dubbed "junior").The intrusive Golyadkin junior is perceived by senior as a threat to his position and his existence. Various scenes are played out at the office, in which junior is supposedly trying to replace senior, superseding senior by outstanding performance or making senior look bad in the eyes of his (their) superiors.Towards the end of this short novel, the reader presented with a logical resolution, namely that Golyadkin has all along been suffering from delusions, and experienced a mental breakdown. The final page superbly reminds us of Philip Roth's Portnoy's complaint.However, another way of reading is possible. Last year, I read Notes from the underground in which a destitute character refers to himself as an insignificant "insect", a total nobody, as opposed to a "hero". The image of the insect made me think of Kafka's Die Verwandlung. While a mental breakdown, and schizophrenic delusion is the most rational explanation for Golyadkin's behaviour, it would still be possible to interpret his visions subjectively, as an externalised threat. For quite a while, reading The double I felt that Golyadkin senior projected his own image on a new employee, an new clerk at the office, equally insignificant as himself. Many of Golyadkin's fears and frantic behaviour to prove himself worthy, or true, could be explained if he felt threatened in his existence by a newcomer who would try to take his place, or possible even oust him. This type of situation is not uncommon in the work place, and as a phenomenon it may have been novel in the mid-nineteenth century.A difficult read with a lot to think about, I will probably need to reread it some other time.

[wktarin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Exhausting and bathotic.

[kateclark_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my first foray into the world of Dostoevsky, and appropriate as it so differs from his later period of writing (after hard labour). While I accept this work as a psychological study, it seems to me this book has many other levels to it also. This is a 'fantastic' novella. The fantastic 'is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event' (Todorov, 1975). It is through this genre that the unexplained supernatural is never explained, and left to the reader to decipher, which is most often impossible. It lies between the marvelous and the uncanny. This novella is a clear example of it because of (in my opinion one of the more interesting aspects of the book) the unreliable narrator. I see his as yet another double of the main character, Goliadkin senior, with 'our hero' meaning the narrator's and self's hero. To the reader, we do not see any sense of a real hero. He even begins to adopt Goliadkin's speech patterns towards the end. The narrator is so unreliable that we are never given a real witness to the existence of goliadkin junior, nor is the reader denied that existence. The novella is puzzling, and difficult to decipher at times. Though he was hailed as a new critical voice in the realist veign, this novella proved dostoevskii could not be so easily pigeon-holed, and displayed his true genius. The first half reads a bit slowly, but the second half flies by (after the supernatural begins). I highly recommend this book as a light introduction to Dostoevskii.