Demons

Such a vast and philosophical book. All the common themes of religion and the struggle of Russia between east and west are there. unless you do not know the philosophical and ideological movements of that age you are probably not going to finish this book. I was relieved myself when i got to the end and understood so little that i had to look for analysis and go back to some chapters and read again.

It is basically about an anarchistic revolutionary society, that creates a lot of excitement in the high society in a time where lots of new ideas are circulating around. But when you give a little finger to the devil it might take the whole arm, and i can assure you that the book offers havoc and destruction in biblical proportions..

Ps. This edition was not annotated. Make sure you get an annotated one unless you are not fluent in french.

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horried Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a “novel-pamphlet” in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia. From the Trade Paperback edition.

“Listen to a big idea: There was one day on earth, and in the middle of the earth stood three crosses. One on a cross believed so much that he said to another: ‘This day you will be with me in paradise.' They day ended, they both died, went, and did not find either paradise or resurrection. What had been said would not prove true. Listen: this man was the highest on all the earth, he constituted what it was to live for. Without this man the whole planet with everything on it is–madness only. There has not been one like Him before or since, not ever, even to the point of miracle. This is the miracle, that there has not been and never will be such a one. And if so, if the laws of nature did not pity even This One, did not pity even their own miracle, but made Him, too, live amidst a lie and die for a lie, then the whole planet is a lie, and stands upon a lie and a stupid mockery. Then the very laws of the planet are a lie and a devil's vaudeville. Why live then, answer me, if you're a man.”