Demons

A provincial Russian town slowly comes apart. A circle of young revolutionaries, led by the manipulative Pyotr Verkhovensky, gathers around the enigmatic Nikolai Stavrogin, while the older generation looks on, half-amused and half-complicit. What begins as talk ends in conspiracy and murder.

The novel was inspired by a real crime — the 1869 killing of a student by the revolutionary Sergey Nechayev and his followers — and is often read as a warning about ideology without conscience. In English the title appears as Demons, The Devils and The Possessed.