White Nights

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821—1881) determined his main literary task in his youth: “Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life trying to solve it, do not say that you have wasted your time;... I am engaged in this mystery because I want to be a man.” Following his principle, the writer created numerous multifaceted characters and complex plots, which researchers are still struggling to analyze today. His stories encompass everything: mysterious love triangles, unhappy marriages and suppressed malice, tumultuous clarifications of relationships and the dreaminess of desperate romantics, self-sacrifice and despotism. The book includes the stories “The Landlady” (1847), “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849), “A Weak Heart” (1848), “White Nights: A Sentimental Novel” (1848), and the short story “The Little Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” (1876).