The fictional narrator and central character of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Double has the surname Golyadkin.
Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin is a low-ranking civil servant in Saint Petersburg. His life becomes increasingly unstable when he encounters another man who looks like him and bears the same name, but appears more socially confident and successful.
The novel was published in 1846, soon after Dostoevsky’s debut Poor Folk. Its psychological and uncanny treatment of divided identity differed from the sentimental realism that had brought him early attention.
Golyadkin is sometimes confused with Makar Devushkin, the letter-writing clerk in Poor Folk, or Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment. They are separate characters from different works.