Demons: Introduction by Joseph Frank

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.