A Faint Heart

On a snow-bright New Year’s Eve in St. Petersburg, shy clerk Vasya Shumkov becomes engaged—and in the afterglow of love, gratitude, and crushing self-doubt, his fragile mind begins to crack. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s piercing early novella follows the exhilaration and terror of a young man desperate to be worthy of happiness and of his patron’s trust, and the devoted friend who will do anything to save him. Vivid scenes—the cap at Madame Leroux’s, frantic overnight copying, a plea to a superior—build to a compact, devastating portrait of conscience, obsession, and collapse.

Narrated with compassion and nuance by Paul Landergan, this performance illuminates Dostoevsky’s humor, tenderness, and tragic inevitability, bringing to life a timeless story of friendship, love, and the peril of perfectionism. Ideal for fans of psychological classics, Russian literature, and powerful novellas.