Demons

28 hrs. 16 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrator Sergey Didok

Description

“The Demons” is one of Dostoevsky’s most controversial novels. Some see in it a prophetic pamphlet. Others see it as a kind of literary proving ground for testing various philosophical ideas. Still others see it as a sophisticated psychological thriller. The plot is based on a real event—the “Nechaev affair,” which shook intellectual Russia in the 1870s. Revolutionaries, members of a small clandestine circle, killed their comrade who had decided to “step away from work.” However, Dostoevsky is in no way aiming to present a factually accurate picture of what happened. His creation is far deeper: within a private, specific Russian tragedy, he finds the universal and the human. In “The Demons,” perhaps a record number of characters for one novel appear—figures who became milestones of world literature and philosophy. This is Nikolai Stavrogin, whom later Nietzsche and Freud scrutinized so carefully. And Kirillov, whose ideas influenced A. Camus and the philosophy of the existentialists. And Pyotr Verkhovensky and his companions from the “cell,” whose images are reinterpreted by Luchino Visconti and other cultural figures of the 20th century—exploring yet another new “demonic” phenomenon: fascism.