The Landlady by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Landlady is a novella by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, written in 1847. Set in Saint Petersburg, it tells of an abstracted young man, Vasily Mikhailovich Ordynov, and his obsessive love for Katerina, the wife of a dismal husband whom Ordynkov perceives as a malignant fortune-teller or mystic. The story has echoes of Russian folklore and may contain autobiographical references. In its time The Landlady had a mixed reception, more recently being seen as perhaps unique in Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre. The first part of the novella was published in October 1847 in Notes of the Fatherland, the second part in November that year.