Diary of a Madman

Diary of a Madman is a short story told through the diary entries of Poprishchin, a lowly clerk in St Petersburg. At first he seems merely lonely and resentful, copying papers for his superiors and daydreaming about a director's daughter. As the entries go on, his view of the world grows stranger and less reliable. The story is both comic and painful, a close portrait of a mind under strain and of the humiliations of rank and poverty.