Demons

A masterful translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s rollicking novel that examines the effect of a charismatic but unscrupulous self-styled revolutionary leader on a group of credulous followers—from “the premier Russian-to-English translators of the era” (The New Yorker)

“[Pevear and Volokhonsky] capture the feverishly intense, personal explosions of activity and emotion that manifest themselves in Russian life.”—The New York Times Book Review

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russia 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 he emerged with in 1872 was at once his darkest novel until The Brothers Karamazov and his most ferociously funny. For alongside its relentlessly escalating plot of conspiracy and assassination, Demons (which earlier translators erroneously titled The Possessed) is a blistering comedy of ideas run amok. And, like all of Dostoevsky’s novels, it is also a riot of literary voices, whose profusion, energy, and variety are rendered wonderfully in this English version.“[An] admirable new translation of . . . Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.”—New York Review of Books

“The merit in this edition of Demons resides in the technical virtuosity of the translators. . . . They capture the feverishly intense, personal explosions of activity and emotion that manifest themselves in Russian life.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Demons is the Dostoevsky novel for our age. . . . [Pevear and Volokhonsky] have managed to capture and differentiate the characters’ many voices. . . . They come into their own when faced with Dostoevsky’s wonderfully quirky use of varied speech patterns. . . . A capital job of restoration.”—Los Angeles Times

About the Translators

   Richard Pevear has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy, Albert Savinio, and Pavel Florensky, as well as two books of poetry.  He has received fellowships for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of the translation of The Brothers Karamazov. Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad.  She has translated the work of the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff.

   Pevear and Volokhonsky were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of The Brothers Karamazov. They are married and live in France

The new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky Formerly translated as The Possessed