The Double concerns Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a humble office-clerk who discovers himself followed and usurped by a doppelganger. Indeed, the subtitle is ‘a Petersburg poem’ – although it is certainly prose, from where I’m standing. The Double, at only 135 pages in my Dover Thrift edition, probably only counts as a short story for this author.
It’s nice when these connections appear…) So, it’s by a well-known author, but perhaps he is better known for his longer titles. But The Double was translated into English by Constance Garnett: mother of David Garnett, owner of A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee. (Initially it might seem like it has nothing common with my first ‘strange little book’, A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee – and, strangeness apart, the narratives don’t really. And here is the other ‘strange little book’ I was going to tell you about, finally! The Double (1846) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
0 kommentar(er)
