In White Nights the narrator is a young man living in Saint Petersburg who suffers from loneliness. He gets to know and falls in love with a young woman, but the love remains unrequited as the woman misses her lover, with whom she is finally reunited. Notes from the Underground is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator, who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. In Mr. Prokharchin, a man lives an extremely poor life, eating frugal meals and sleeping on a mattress directly on the floor. On his death, the reader eventually discovers that the man was in fact wealthy and was living in that way voluntarily.

This anthology also includes: A Faint Heart, A Christmas Tree and a Wedding, Polzunkov, and A Little Hero.