The Devils: The Possessed (Penguin Classics)

The Devils: The Possessed (Penguin Classics)

“What I am writing now is a tendentious thing,” Dostoyevsky wrote to a friend in connection with his first outline for <i>The Devils</i>. “I feel like saying everything as passionately as possible. (Let the nihilists and the Westerners scream that I am <i>reactionary!</i>) To hell with them. I shall say everything to the last word.”<br>  <br> As Dostoyevsky predicted, <i>The Devils</i>, or <i>The Possessed</i>, was indeed denounced by radical critics as the work of a reactionary renegade. But radicals aside, it enjoyed great success both for its literary power and for its explicit and provocative politics; and for its story of Russian terrorists plotting violence and destruction, only to murder one of their own number.<br>  <br> “Stavrogin’s Confession”, the section omitted when the novel first appeared, is included as an appendix to this volume.