Demons

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mar 2008 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

Pyotr and Stavrogin are the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell. Their aim is to overthrow the Tsar, destroy society and seize power for themselves. Together they train terrorists who are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals – even if the mission means suicide. But when it seems the group is about to be discovered, will their recruits be willing to kill one of their own circle in order to cover their tracks? Partly based on the real-life case of a student murdered by his fellow revolutionaries, Dostoyevsky’s sprawling novel is a powerful and prophetic, yet lively and often comic depiction of nineteenth-century Russia, and a savage indictment of the madness and self-destruction of those who use violence to serve their beliefs

Ratings and reviews

This became my favorite Dostoevsky novel, and it's a very insightful examination of younger generations inability to compromise wlingly with the sentiments of a prior generation. Appealing to anyone with psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, or just pure irrational ism; portrays the tragedy of religious demtia and poorly interpreted dogma, as well as the conundrum of changing ones point of view throughout life, and the circumstances and tragedies it may induce.

In the censored section, 'At Tikhon's' (an account of Stavrogin's most evil deed): Stavrogin's gloating awareness of his own deliberate cruelty is contrasted with, and contained within, the chilling description of a view through a window casement.

What's Old Is New Again

About the author

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His debut, the epistolary novella Poor Folk(1846), made his name. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with the politically subversive 'Petrashevsky circle' and until 1854 he lived in a convict prison in Omsk, Siberia. From this experience came The House of the Dead (1860-2). In 1860 he began the journal Vremya (Time). Already married, he fell in love with one of his contributors, Appollinaria Suslova, eighteen years his junior, and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. After the death of his first wife, Maria, in 1864, Dostoyevsky completed Notes from Underground and began work towards Crime and Punishment (1866). The major novels of his late period are The Idiot (1868), Demons(1871-2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He died in 1881.