Demons

Dostoevsky first conceived of this book as 'novel-pamphlet' in which he intended to 'say everything' about Russia's new liberal reformers, whom he loathed - particularly the group of anti-Czarist political terrorists known as Nihilists. During the winter of 1869 this group, in the course of plotting destruction, murdred on of their own; this event and the ensuing trial became the nucleus of Dostoevsky's unfolding masterwork.

About the Author

Fyodor Dostoevsky's life was as dark and dramatic as the great novels he wrote. He was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a former army surgeon. A short first novel brought him instant success, but his writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. Sentenced to a firing squad, dressed in a death shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited his execution when, suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence. He then spent four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to suffer from epilepsy, and he only returned to St. Petersburg a fall ten years after he had left in chains. His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a conservative and profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. His marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of destitution brought about by gambling, gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. THE IDIOT, THE POSSESSED, and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. He died in 1881.