Demons

Paperback

English language

Published Feb. 26, 2017 by Digireads.com Publishing.

ISBN:
978-1-4209-5679-5
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1020282010

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (14 reviews)

One of Dostoyevsky’s most famous novels, this 1872 work utilizes five main characters and their philosophical ideas to describe the political chaos of Imperial Russia in the nineteenth century. Based on an actual event involving the murder of a revolutionary by his comrades, this novel depicts a band of ruthless radicals attempting to incite revolt in their small, rural community. At the center of “Demons” lies Dostoyevsky’s desire to protest the enthusiasm for revolution he saw all around him, as well as the conservative establishment’s inability to cope with those revolutionary ideas or their consequences. The author considered utopias unobtainable, and he depicts the radicals and the ideas they represent with a frightening savage intensity, as if they were possessed by demons rather than those unrealistic ideas. Perhaps the greatest political novel ever written, Dostoyevsky’s “Demons” fully displays his devastating condemnation of human manipulation through brilliant characterization, as well as …

61 editions

reviewed Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Dover Thrift Editions)

Review of 'Demons' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

5/5

I've read and reread this book countless times, anytime I start this and take over 2 days of a break from it I feel compelled to start from the top again.

Very few books do you come across where the writer takes events from life (or whatever fictional setting they've conjured up) and put them onto paper without doing nothing more than narrating these events in their own style and calling it a day. The most brilliant thing about this book is how naturally Dostoevsky swaps from different communication styles from character to character. Arguably this is something he does throughout all his works but it is much more pronounced in demons and especiallythis translation (Pevear & Volokhonsky's).

The book has always been on of my favourites—if
not, my favourite—out of Dostoevsky's corpus. It's not that this story is the most enticing or most unique of his works, …

avatar for pd-bomber

rated it

3 stars
avatar for raccoon

rated it

5 stars
avatar for KeenOwl

rated it

5 stars
avatar for Lucius

rated it

3 stars
avatar for RupertOwen

rated it

3 stars
avatar for Tenzin

rated it

5 stars
avatar for Tenzin

rated it

5 stars
avatar for mckmak

rated it

5 stars
avatar for stim

rated it

5 stars
avatar for Moorlock

rated it

2 stars
avatar for illusions_perdues

rated it

4 stars