Paperback 880 pages Published 1872 Edition Vintage Classics Edition 1995 Greatest Books amalgamated list of best books Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horried Russians in 1869 Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a novelpamphlet 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 prerevolutionary Russia Devils also known in English as The Possessed and The Demons was first published in 18712 The third of Dostoevskys five major novels it is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism depicting the disarray which follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town Dostoevsky compares infectious radicalism to the devils that drove the Gadarene swine over the precipice in his vision of a society possessed by demonic creatures that produce devastating delusions of rationality Dostoevsky weaves suicide rape and a multiplicity of scandals into a compelling story of political evil yet he is at his most humorous in Devils the novel is full of buffoonery and a grotesque comedy