Book Bearings
White Nights
- 126 pages · about 2 hours
- First published 1848
- 124 editions
- Free to read
Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.
1 About this book
White Nights is a short work by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1848, early in his career. Its narrator, a lonely young man who never gives his name, lives in Saint Petersburg and spends his time walking the city, absorbed in his own daydreams. One night he comes to the aid of a young woman, Nastenka, whom he has noticed standing by a railing in tears. Over four nights the two meet and talk: he tells her about the life of a dreamer, and she tells him her own history and whom she is waiting for.
- Social life and customs
- Short stories
- Utopias
- Slavic philology
- Utopies
2 What to expect
A short, early Dostoevsky story told over four summer nights in Saint Petersburg, where a lonely dreamer meets a young woman who is waiting for someone else. Loneliness, fantasy against real life and one-sided love are its subjects, treated tenderly and with some gentle self-mockery. It is talkative, sentimental and bittersweet, far lighter than his later novels, and it can be read in one sitting.
Good for readers who want: a short Russian classic, a tender story of loneliness, and a bittersweet romance.
3 Read it free, right here
A free scan from the Internet Archive opens right here on the page, with no sign-up.
Read it on the Internet Archive4 About Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
5 More by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6 Similar books
- The Duel and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
- The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
- Short Stories by Anton Chekhov
- The Death of Ivan Ilych and other stories by Leo Tolstoy
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Solaris by Stanisław Lem
- The tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar