Demons: A Novel in Three Parts (Vintage Classics)

A wonderful introduction to 19th Century Russian history by a masterful story writer, and an accomplished translator who in this edition is anonymous. I won’t forget this entertaining account of a society that is ready to crumble and morph into what became the Soviet Union and today is again only Russia.

This story is more than a novel. It is a warning to those who wish to upset society, who set out to create confusion and destroy lives. Let's defund the police. Let's have no borders. Let's have no morality. Let's create confusion and destroy society, no matter how many lives are harmed. After all, we are our own gods, with no one to answer to,but ourselves. That thinking brings no joy, only heartbreak and disillusionment. We may have nothing, or we may have money and power, but in the end we all answer to God

I guess I am a Dostoevsky nerd since I first purchased the hard copy version and then recently the ebook version. As other reviewers have mentioned it is amazing how the author could predict the demons in our lives and the results they produced--not just in the short term but even up to the present. While not intended as a religious book (I think) he shows the results of taking God out of our lives -- it makes rooms for the demons. I enjoy the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky though by including the actual French in the text where appropriate they continually remind me of my poor French fortunately they include the english as footnotes at the bottom of the page. They also include footnotes in the back of the book explaining items that might not be familiar to a casual reader. There are alot of characters and the plot is a lot more involved than the current popular novels so this is certainly not a beach read. I enjoyed the book and it certainly makes you think and I believe it is well worth the effort to read. I highly recommend this book.

Well. That took me a disappointingly long time to read. My life got flipped upside down at some point after starting this, and the density of the work really requires a pretty clear mind to make sense of the words on the page. I finally did it though, and I am no longer disappointed.While, for me, Demons lacks the accessibility of Crime and Punishment (Everyman's Library), the poignancy of The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) The Brothers Karamazov, or the emotion of Notes from Underground (Everyman's Library) Dostoevsky still managed to turn a highly political, extremely cerebral, and academically dense novel into something that, in the end, managed to pull me into the novel for more than simple academic curiosity. I am not a student a Russian history, political or otherwise. I am not Russian. It felt like much of the novel was so mired in the history of Russian thought and identity that I became lost and distant from the characters early on. Making my way through Part 1 was a chore. I found it difficult to relate to the characters, difficult to understand, and difficult to keep track of everyone moving in and out of the story. I knew that I wouldn't, but I nearly wanted to give up - hence my foray into the playful sadness of Italo Calvino and the personal narrative of Ham on Rye: A Novel.Once I was able to return to this book and made it to Part II the story finally began to gell, and the characters began to come into their own for me. While this may just make it clear that I was reading this for the wrong reasons, an emotional connection is what I desired and Demons eventually delivered. I can't pretend to understand all of the symbolism, historical touchstones, or philosophical debates that this novel endeavors to bring to the forefront of my mind. I found few passages concise enough that I could even underline - a rarity for me with Dostoevsky. I am, obviously, not the target audience for this book. Nor could I pretend to truly understand the depth of the generational and idealistic clash that was truly the centerpiece of this novel. I felt it... underneath... but it rarely struck me as the raison d'etre for this book. (if he can throw French around incessantly, then surely I get one!) Dostoevsky, however, is a Master and how anyone could walk away from this without gaining something is beyond me.Philosophically, while I found the earlier conversations around the necessity of God for the existence of a great nation, it was Kirillov who finally grabbed my attention and pulled me in. If there is no God then, certainly, I am God. Perhaps this is because I'm still stuck on Albert Camus, but this - to the best of my memory - was one of the first (if not *the* first) things to truly resonate with me. Seen in juxtaposition with Trofimovich's revelations toward the end of the novel these two ideas are the bookends of the piece for me."My immortality is necessary if only because God will not want to do an injustice and extinguish the fire of love for him once it is kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than Love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and is it possible for being not to bow before it? If I have come to love him and rejoice in my love - is it possible that he should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us to naught? If there is God, I am immortal!"Emotionally... I was afraid this was going to leave me dry. I was taken aback when Liza entered the crowd, but I couldn't tell if I was more surprised by what happened to her or that I found myself caring. The murders covered up by the fire did not shock me - surprising as I kept seeing unrequited love everywhere I looked yet could not empathize Maria Timofeevna. If I was taken aback by my feelings for Liza, I was completely shocked by my care for Shatov. Looking back, it is easy to see why I felt for him more than the others (up to that point), but the story was woven so well and so tightly that I did not even realize I was becoming involved. I felt like a frog in a pot of water with ever-increasing temperature, and once the water boiled, it was too late. Shatov's happiness is my own. My own as I see it. I knew this was fleeting and temporal... Pyotr wouldn't have let it be any other way. Yet still I hoped - and was devastated by the inevitable conclusion. The final fate of his wife and "son" was, I suppose, just as inevitable, but it still felt like a twist of a knife that had already delivered its fatal blow.The way in which Dostoevsky set me up to care about these characters was absolutely brilliant, and I feel he must be wringing his hands and laughing at me as hammer blow after hammer blow fell on the hopes for happiness that he instilled in me for these characters. And then there's Trofimovich... Ever the fool for love. Ever hopeful yet always accepting that this hope could never be realized. Tragic. And, like Shatov, finally finding that for which he was searching only as his story comes to an end. I have to stop reading these types of books because this is just making me setup my own life to end in a similar way, but the feelings evoked in those final scenes were magical. "Enough! Twenty years are gone, there's no bringing them back; I'm a fool, too." That single sentence drove me nearly to tears as if reading a tome like this at the bar wasn't already fool enough. As I said, I suppose I always knew that I would only be let down by the time this story had finished, but I had no idea I would care quite so much.Even for Nikolai... love... happiness, perhaps, was on its way to him. Would it have assuaged his guilt enough to prevent his actions? I do not know. Neither for him nor for myself nor for anyone left in the bloody wake of this story that ripped apart this small town.I wavered on my rating for this... I wanted to give it 3 stars based just on how difficult I felt it was to get into the book at the beginning. Given how much that I know I didn't get and given how much I was eventually affected by the events that unfolded that seemed extremely unfair. This is another one that, given enough time, I'd really like to reread as I think I would get much more out of it. Maybe if I manage to get old I will one day have time to revisit the sins of these little demons.