I was supposed to be having the time of my life. When Esther Greenwood wins an internship on a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer.

'I am a sick person. I am a spiteful person. An unattractive person, too .

. .'In the depths of a cellar in St. Petersburg, a retired civil servant spews forth a passionate and furious note on the ills of society.

The underground man's manifesto reveals his erratic, self-contradictory and even sadistic nature. Yet Dostoyevsky's disturbing character causes an uncomfortable flicker of recognition, and we see in him our own human condition.