![]() The novel takes a very long time introducing the characters and setting up the main action. ![]() There are several dozen characters - more even than usual for Dostoevsky (I think) - and the Russian names, always a daunting task to keep straight, are overwhelming. I’ve tried for years to read this novel but was never able to get through it. Translation by Constance Garnett appendix translated by S. Funny, shocking, and tragic, it is a profound and affecting work with deep philosophical discourses about God, human freedom and political revolution. Inspired by a real political killing in 1869, the book is an impassioned response to the ideologies of European liberalism and nihilism, which threatened Russian Orthodoxy it eerily predicted the Russian Revolution, which would take place 50 years later. This possession leads them to engulf a quiet provincial town and subject it to a storm of violence. They are consumed by their desires and ideals, and have surrendered themselves fully to the darkness of their "demons". ![]() It follows the career of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, a political terrorist who leads a group of nihilists on a demonic quest for societal breakdown. Also known as Demons, The Possessed is a powerful socio-political novel about revolutionary ideas and the radicals behind them. ![]()
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