Demons: A Novel in Three Parts

Excellent translation of this very existential novel, and includes the missing chapter Dostoevsky's original publisher rejected! A deep and wise book!

I originally read Crime and Punishment seven years ago in school, and after which Dostoevsky became one of my favorite authors. This novel blew that novel out of the water. I was originally intrigued by the title, but had no idea that this book would be such a killer piece of introspection, description, philosophy, and character development. If you even remotely liked reading Dostoevsky, I'd highly recommend reading this novel. This edition also has an absolutely gorgeous cover, and the translation work is beautiful, engrossing, and kept my attention substantially better than other pop fiction novels I've read recently. For being a classic novel written over 100 years ago, I was surprised by how modern and refined the prose sounded, and I will definitely be picking up other translations by Pevear and Volokhonsky. Because of this book, I will now be reading any Russian classic literature I can get my hands on. 10/10, please read this book. Do not stop at Crime and Punsihment, continue to explore Dostoevsky's masterpieces.

Everyman’s library always delivers. My whole Dostoevsky collections is by them. It is a beautiful edition with great font, and I really enjoy the translations by P&V.

Well. That took me a disappointingly long time to read. My life got flipped upside down at some point after starting this, and the density of the work really requires a pretty clear mind to make sense of the words on the page. I finally did it though, and I am no longer disappointed. While, for me, Demons lacks the accessibility of Crime and Punishment (Everyman's Library) , the poignancy of The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) The Brothers Karamazov , or the emotion of Notes from Underground (Everyman's Library) Dostoevsky still managed to turn a highly political, extremely cerebral, and academically dense novel into something that, in the end, managed to pull me into the novel for more than simple academic curiosity. I am not a student a Russian history, political or otherwise. I am not Russian. It felt like much of the novel was so mired in the history of Russian thought and identity that I became lost and distant from the characters early on. Making my way through Part 1 was a chore. I found it difficult to relate to the characters, difficult to understand, and difficult to keep track of everyone moving in and out of the story. I knew that I wouldn't, but I nearly wanted to give up - hence my foray into the playful sadness of Italo Calvino and the personal narrative of Ham on Rye: A Novel . Once I was able to return to this book and made it to Part II the story finally began to gell, and the characters began to come into their own for me. While this may just make it clear that I was reading this for the wrong reasons, an emotional connection is what I desired and Demons eventually delivered. I can't pretend to understand all of the symbolism, historical touchstones, or philosophical debates that this novel endeavors to bring to the forefront of my mind. I found few passages concise enough that I could even underline - a rarity for me with Dostoevsky. I am, obviously, not the target audience for this book. Nor could I pretend to truly understand the depth of the generational and idealistic clash that was truly the centerpiece of this novel. I felt it... underneath... but it rarely struck me as the raison d'etre for this book. (if he can throw French around incessantly, then surely I get one!) Dostoevsky, however, is a Master and how anyone could walk away from this without gaining something is beyond me. Philosophically, while I found the earlier conversations around the necessity of God for the existence of a great nation, it was Kirillov who finally grabbed my attention and pulled me in. If there is no God then, certainly, I am God. Perhaps this is because I'm still stuck on Albert Camus, but this - to the best of my memory - was one of the first (if not *the* first) things to truly resonate with me. Seen in juxtaposition with Trofimovich's revelations toward the end of the novel these two ideas are the bookends of the piece for me. "My immortality is necessary if only because God will not want to do an injustice and extinguish the fire of love for him once it is kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than Love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and is it possible for being not to bow before it? If I have come to love him and rejoice in my love - is it possible that he should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us to naught? If there is God, I am immortal!" Emotionally... I was afraid this was going to leave me dry. I was taken aback when Liza entered the crowd, but I couldn't tell if I was more surprised by what happened to her or that I found myself caring. The murders covered up by the fire did not shock me - surprising as I kept seeing unrequited love everywhere I looked yet could not empathize Maria Timofeevna. If I was taken aback by my feelings for Liza, I was completely shocked by my care for Shatov. Looking back, it is easy to see why I felt for him more than the others (up to that point), but the story was woven so well and so tightly that I did not even realize I was becoming involved. I felt like a frog in a pot of water with ever-increasing temperature, and once the water boiled, it was too late. Shatov's happiness is my own. My own as I see it. I knew this was fleeting and temporal... Pyotr wouldn't have let it be any other way. Yet still I hoped - and was devastated by the inevitable conclusion. The final fate of his wife and "son" was, I suppose, just as inevitable, but it still felt like a twist of a knife that had already delivered its fatal blow. The way in which Dostoevsky set me up to care about these characters was absolutely brilliant, and I feel he must be wringing his hands and laughing at me as hammer blow after hammer blow fell on the hopes for happiness that he instilled in me for these characters. And then there's Trofimovich... Ever the fool for love. Ever hopeful yet always accepting that this hope could never be realized. Tragic. And, like Shatov, finally finding that for which he was searching only as his story comes to an end. I have to stop reading these types of books because this is just making me setup my own life to end in a similar way, but the feelings evoked in those final scenes were magical. "Enough! Twenty years are gone, there's no bringing them back; I'm a fool, too." That single sentence drove me nearly to tears as if reading a tome like this at the bar wasn't already fool enough. As I said, I suppose I always knew that I would only be let down by the time this story had finished, but I had no idea I would care quite so much. Even for Nikolai... love... happiness, perhaps, was on its way to him. Would it have assuaged his guilt enough to prevent his actions? I do not know. Neither for him nor for myself nor for anyone left in the bloody wake of this story that ripped apart this small town. I wavered on my rating for this... I wanted to give it 3 stars based just on how difficult I felt it was to get into the book at the beginning. Given how much that I know I didn't get and given how much I was eventually affected by the events that unfolded that seemed extremely unfair. This is another one that, given enough time, I'd really like to reread as I think I would get much more out of it. Maybe if I manage to get old I will one day have time to revisit the sins of these little demons.

Most of these reviews are about the ideas and politics of Demons (aka The Possessed), or how it compares to Dostoevski's other novels and its place among the "great" books. But you probably know what the book is about already and prefer to make up your own mind about its position in the canon--after you read it. What you really want to know is "will I like it?" The answer is emphatically YES! If you like Dostoevski, Turganev or Tolstoy, you love it. If you read Henry James, Thomas Hardy or George Eliot, you'll love it. If you have a taste for historical fiction, ideas and politics, you'll love it. The great strength of Devils is its characters. Each person is motivated by an `ism (liberalism, feudalism, atheism, nihilism, socialism, etc) which posses him or her like a demon, but they are not flat types or puppets. All the main players are fully drawn flesh and blood people. They have quirks and contradictions that make them completely real. You may not like these people, but they will fascinate you. There's not much plot in Demons. But so do a lot of superb novels: Zorba the Greek, Pale Fire, and David Copperfield, for example. Mark Twain admits Huck Finn has no plot, it's a series of escapades. Jake goes fishing, Brett picks bad men--that's The Sun Also Rises. The dramatic momentum of Demons comes from your own attempts to find a plot in the tensions between the characters (and literally in plotting of the plodding conspirators). Something is definitely going on, you're just never sure what. Part One feels very much like a typical Victorian novel. Men talk at their club. Women jockey for social gain. Rumors fly about linking and relinking the young people into love affairs and scandals. And then just below the surface, the (rather thick) narrator suddenly and nonchalantly exposes a mirroring network of links more sinister than social and anarchic than romantic. As these develop the machinations of the story move from marriage to murder. In this Dostoevski cleverly captures the reader in the same web of dread and paranoia that grips the characters. So it is the interplay of forces, the murkiness and dread that make Demons a page-turner. It's marvelous to experience Here's something else rarely mentioned: Dostoevski had a great sense of humor. There are a number of great comic scenes, gags and zippy one-liners. It's not his popular image, but old Teddy D was a funny guy. This translation (Pavear & Volokhonsky) is very successful at bringing out the humor and rendering into English the zestiness of the dialogue.

The most political of Dostoyevsky's novels, "Demons" (1872) is also one of his most enjoyable. In a provincial city in the heart of Russia Dostoyevsky set the stage for a showdown between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. The title has been a point of contention over the years, however "Demons" is the only possible translation of the Russian title "Бесы". With all due respect to Constance Garnett, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated the title correctly. What are the demons? The demons are all of the Western ideas which Dostoyevsky the Slavophile saw infiltrating Mother Russia: nihilism, republicanism, socialism, materialism, individualism, anarchy and atheism. Rather than writing just a political tract Dostoyevsky produced a tale of political intrigue, social unrest, murder and suicide. What else could result from the importation of Western demons to Russia? "Demons", then, is an attack on the Westernizers and their cherished ideas, ideas best left in Europe. The cold-blooded murder of one of the conspirators by his comrades foreshadowed the callous disregard of life shown by the Bolsheviks; in this Dostoyevsky was a true prophet. "Demons" is a novel in which Dostoyevsky's moral insight shines brightly. It is also a good story, a tale well told by a great author. This edition contains an introduction by the translators, a list of characters with stress marks to aid in correct pronunciation and it also contains the chapter entitled "At Tikhon's" which was rejected by the magazine in which "Demons" first appeared serially. It is a chapter which Dostoyevsky valued but was never able to rewrite to the magazine editor's satisfaction. This chapter, included as an appendix, is worth reading as it does a lot to illuminate the character of Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin.

A compelling read that delves into the depths of the human psyche and ideological extremism.

Book is good but the fonts and the paper quality is despicable. Not something that can archived for a long time.

One of the greatest stories ever written

A classic. Dostoyevsky’s lampooning of his fellow writers at a soirée is hilarious. Was Pyotr Stepanovich, who escapes on the train at the end, part of a wider network of nihilists or just a sadist? We’ll never know but I’d say the former. The core group and the other nihilists didn't seem like they could organize a night out in a brewery, at one point they had a mini meeting to decide if they were having a meeting, and when they took the stage at the event near the end of the book a female student kept interrupting and throwing out leaflets about student rights. Pyotr Stepanovich got out of in the nick of time at the end. At one point Dostoyevsky has him tell Von Lembke that he 'lost' von Lembke's manuscript for his first novel, not yet sent to the publisher, which shows how Dostoyevsky rated his Pyotr Stepanovich's character.