Book Review: White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky

White Nights–Fyodor Dostoevsky. White Nights is a sentimental novella written in 1848 when Dostoyevski was still early in his literary career. Though brief, it is considered one of the most intense and discussed works in Dostoevsky's shorter fiction.

Set over four nights and one morning, the story takes place during the famed "white nights" in St. Petersburg. It follows a nameless narrator, the "dreamer," a lonely young man who meets Nastenka, a woman in hope of her lover's return. The dreamer loves her so much in a series of conversations that the moment her old lover comes back is the end.

With the subtitle - “A Sentimental Story of a Dreamer's Diary”, the novella trades on little more than autobiographical reminiscence and unfulfilled longing, rather than any overt plot. The “white nights” represent a place between the dream and reality; they illustrate the dreamer’s feelings of isolation, loneliness, remoteness, melancholy, and yearning.

The semi-autobiographical quality succeeds particularly well in depicting solitude, imagination, and the feeling of exile, although the work was written when Dostoevsky was only 26. White Nights, published just before his arrest and subsequent exile to Siberia, is one of the last works he wrote during this initial stage in his writing career..

structural balance, female psychology, Managerial relevance, Romanticisation, Sentimentality

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