Le notti bianche (Белые ночи)

A young dreamer, completely immersed in a world dominated by feelings and fantasies, has his first contact with reality when, during one of his solitary summer walks, he encounters a girl in tears. This stranger becomes an anchor for him to the real world—a world made of waiting, hope, and disillusionment. The city of Saint Petersburg serves as the backdrop where, over the course of four nights, the two protagonists of this short story confide their life stories to one another. The awakening on the final morning brings with it a subtle doubt, inviting the reader to reflect on the thin line between dream and reality.

Author: Fedor Michailovic Dostoevskij (Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский)

He was born in Moscow to a fallen aristocratic family of modest means. Despite their economic hardships, his father, a doctor, managed to send his sons to Saint Petersburg, where Fyodor studied military engineering. In 1846, he published his first novel, Poor Folk, which enjoyed immediate success. A prolific period followed, during which some of his most famous works were released, including The Double (1846) and White Nights (1848). After eight years of forced labor in Siberia, he returned to Saint Petersburg, where he regained fame among the general public with Crime and Punishment (1866). In January 1868, the magazine The Russian Messenger began the serialized publication of The Idiot, a novel he finished in Florence the following year. Demons appeared in 1871, in which nihilistic ideology is violently criticized. A Writer's Diary was published in 1873, followed in 1880 by The Brothers Karamazov, his final masterpiece and the synthesis of his philosophical thought.