Recommendation of the Month: The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

“Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced— it wrestled its way into my soul—it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. —Oh! For a voice to speak!—oh! Horror!—oh! Any horror but this!”

A Nasty Anecdote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Another one of Dostoevsky´s amusing short stories, A nasty Anecdote, takes the reader to a particular night in the life of state councilor Ivan Ilyich Pralinsky. This is a man of good reputation, whose self image is that of a highly confident, educated and refined man, capable of showing noble feelings whenever necessary and, most important of all, more than adequate to keep up to the new “thoughts”.