As both a masterpiece of Russian populist writing and a parody of the entire genre, Poor People is an early example of Dostoevskys genius. Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical man of the underground, he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches. This work is remarkable for its vivid characterizations, especially of Dievushkin, the clerk, solely by means of his letters to the young girl and her answers to him. On this excellent audiobook, the epistolary format is well presented by the single-voiced first-person readings of Cullen and Emlen. Both readers express the hopeless love and rage that the two correspondents capture in their heartfelt letters. KLIATT