The demons

Motivated by a true event – the murder of the student I. I. Ivanov by the nihilist group led by S. G. Nechaev in 1869 – Demons, written the following year, is Dostoevsky's only work conceived with openly polemical aims. However, by fictionally recreating that event, the writer ended up composing a masterpiece on par with Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, which is also an in-depth study of the political, social, philosophical, and religious thought of his time.
With incredible lucidity and a rare understanding of history, this novel – translated for the first time from the original Russian – proves to be prophetic. In it, the reader can glimpse, in Kirillov's intellectual drama, the anticipation of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and, in the ideas of Shigalyov and Pyotr Stepanovich, the cruel fanaticism of Hitler and Stalin. In an age when violence, ignorance, terrorism, and ideological imposture – true demons that plagued the 20th century – remain alive under new disguises, this is a book of striking relevance.