Set in mid 19th-century Russia, Demons examines the effect of a
charismatic but unscrupulous self-styled revolutionary leader on a group
of credulous followers.
Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians
in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet"
in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist
ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a
prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in
pre-revolutionary Russia-a novel that is rivaled only by The Brothers
Karamazov as Dostoevsky's greatest.
The award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
continue their acclaimed series of Dostoevsky translations with this
novel, also known as The Possessed.