In a shoddy apartment amidst the teeming streets of mid-ninteenth-century St Petersburg, a retired Russian bureaucrat begins his confession.

Overwhelmed by the human perversities he has witnessed, the nameless man embarks on a half-desperate, half-mocking personal and political critique. What emerges from Dostoevsky's innovative tragicomedy is a powerful account of a man's breakaway from society and descent 'underground'.