Another Man's Wife and the Husband Under the Bed

Dostoevsky’s story, “The Neighbor’s Wife and the Husband Under the Bed,” was written at the beginning of his literary career. In it, it’s quite hard to spot the future author of the “Great Five Books.” What we have here is a “funny” Dostoevsky, revealing a talent for satire and humor that later will—though in little sparks—appear in his famous novels.

“— Do me a favor, my good sir, allow me to ask you… A passerby flinched and looked with some fear at the man in a fur coat who had spoken to him so directly, at eight o’clock in the evening, right on the street. And everyone knows that if a Petersburg gentleman starts talking on the street to another man, completely unknown to him, then the other gentleman will surely be frightened…”

F. M. Dostoevsky “The Neighbor’s Wife and the Husband Under the Bed,” 1848.