The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank

A delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his wife’s suicide; a witness to a young girl’s ruin; a writer who stretches out on a gravestone and listens to the gossip of the dead … the narrators of these four confessional tales show how little we understand ourselves.