Translated by Constance Garnett (1916)
with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs.
In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown
into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave small group of violent revolutionaries,
from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life
catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers
the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas
that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society
at the time.
The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous
single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might
seem exaggerated – until we consider their all-too-recognisable
descendants in the real world ever since. The key figure in the
novel, however, is beyond politics. Nikolay Stavrogin, another product
of rationalism run wild, exercises his charisma with ruthless authority
and total amorality. His unhappiness is accounted for when he
confesses to a ghastly sexual crime – in a chapter long suppressed by
the censor.
This prophetic account of modern morals and politics, with its
fifty-odd characters, amazing events and challenging ideas, is seen by
some critics as Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.
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