The Devils

"The Devils", or "The Possessed", is the most controversial of Dostoyevsky's masterpieces. A political drama, it has been both hailed as a grim prophecy of the Russian Revolution and denounces as the work of a reactionary renegade. The book is a penetrating commentary on men and affairs with mailicious caricatures of revolutionaries and literary personalities. It is also a work of tragic intensity: Dostoyevsky, tormented by the conflict between good and evil, probed into the very recesses of the mind to discover the dark passions of man. 'Stavrogin's Confession', the section omitted when the novel first appeared, has now been added as an appendix in this volume.