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.
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