December Books 20) The Devils (aka The Possessed) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

[nwhyte]

I found this a bit of a slog, to be honest. An awful lot of time is spent setting up the bourgeois country town whose peace is destroyed by a few men who turn to revolutionary violence for no particularly good reason. It's obviously rather chilling to read in retrospect, given that the forces of revolutionary violence did actually win in Russia

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[inulro]

I barely remember this one - I read it as part of my Russian history module at university and wrote an essay on the political ideas in it as seen through the lens of Dostoevky's (what would eventually be called existentialist) philosophy and how that coloured his ideas about Russia.

My brain broke a few times in the process.

At some point I'd like to read it as a novel rather than as a history project.