Book

Demons

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky · first published 1871

Demons (Russian: Бесы, romanized: Besy, IPA: [ˈbʲe.sɨ]; sometimes also called The Possessed or The Devils) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871–72. It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and a large-scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoevsky's most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily 'tragic' work." According to Ronald Hingley, it is Dostoevsky's "greatest onslaught on Nihilism", and "one of humanity's most impressive achievements—perhaps even its supreme achievement—in the art of prose fiction." Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s.

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