What does freedom really mean? For Fyodor Dostoevsky, it was never an abstract philosophy but a tormenting reality at the core of human existence. Long before the word existentialism was coined, Dostoevsky’s novels wrestled with the very arguments that, in the 20th century, came to dominate philosophy: freedom, despair, doubt, and the unremitting search for meaning. The argument is simple: without Dostoevsky, there is no existentialism. His novels didn’t merely anticipate the movement—they supplied its emotional and psychological DNA.

Take Notes from Underground. This short novel is something of a rant against rational systems. With its protagonist asserting the right to act against his own interests, the book becomes grotesque in its petty, self-destructive tendencies, yet remains unsettlingly alive. Walter Kaufmann once called the opening of Notes from Underground “the best overture for existentialism ever written,” and Jean-Paul Sartre later echoed this by........

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