Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Demons, also known as The Possessed or The Devils, is a dark masterpiece that evokes a world where the lines between and good and evil long ago became blurred. This Penguin Classics edition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Demons is translated by Robert A. Maguire and edited by Ronald Meyer, with an introduction by Robert L. Belknap. Pyotr Verkhovensky and Nikolai Stavrogin are the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell. Their aim is to overthrow the Tsar, destroy society and seize power for themselves. Together they train terrorists who are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals - even if the mission means suicide. But when it seems their motley group is about to be discovered, will their recruits be willing to kill one of their own circle in order to cover their tracks? As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky's and everyone's faith in humanity is tested. Partly based on the real-life case of a student murdered by his fellow revolutionaries, Dostoyevsky's sprawling novel is a powerful and prophetic, yet lively and often comic depiction of nineteenth-century Russia, and a savage indictment of the madness and nihilism of those who use violence to serve their beliefs. Robert A. Maguire's superb translation captures Dostoyevsky's vigorous prose. In his introduction, Robert L. Belknap discusses Dostoyevsky's own revolutionary activities, his narrative technique and use of different genres, and the background of Radicalism in Imperial Russia. Edited by Ronald Meyer, this volume also includes a chronology, further reading, notes and a glossary. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow. From 1849-54 he lived in a convict prison, and in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His other works available in Penguin Classics include Crime & Punishment, The Idiot and Demons. If you enjoyed Demons, you might like Joris-Karl Huysmans' The Damned (Là-Bas), also available in Penguin Classics.

The final masterpiece from the celebrated author of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot... This extraordinary novel, Dostoyevsky's last and greatest work, tells the dramatic story of four brothers--Dmitri, pleasure-seeking, impatient, unruly . . . Ivan, brilliant and morose . . . Alyosha, gentle, loving, honest . . . and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, sly, silent, cruel. Driven by intense passion, they become involved in the brutal murder of their own father, one of the most loathsome characters in all literature. Featuring the famous chapter, "The Grand Inquisitor," Dostoyevsky's final masterpiece is at once a complex character study, a riveting murder mystery, and a fascinating examination of man's morality and the question of God's existence. Translated by Constance Garnett Edited and with a Foreword by Manuel Komroffand an Afterword by Sara Paretsky

Dostoyevsky's epic masterpiece, unabridged, with an afterword by Robin Feuer Miller One of the world's greatest novels, Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder and its consequences--an unparalleled tale of suspense set in the midst of nineteenth-century Russia's troubled transition to the modern age. In the slums of czarist St. Petersburg lives young Raskolnikov, a sensitive, intellectual student. The poverty he has always known drives him to believe that he is exempt from moral law. But when he puts this belief to the test, he suffers unbearably. Crime and punishment, the novel reminds us, grow from the same seed. "No other novelist," wrote Irving Howe of Dostoyevsky, "has dramatized so powerfully the values and dangers, the uses and corruptions of systematized thought." And Friedrich Nietzsche called him "the only psychologist I have anything to learn from." With an Introduction by Leonard J. Stanton and James D. Hardy Jr.and an Afterword by Robin Feuer Miller

This brilliant work by one of Russia's foremost novelists teems with greed, passion, depravity, and complex moral issues. Three brothers, involved in the brutal murder of their despicable father, find their lives irrevocably altered as they are driven by intense, uncontrollable emotions of rage and revenge.