Demons (Revised): The Possessed (Abridged, Annotated, and Edited for a New Generation) (Unabridged‪)‬

This newly revised abridged and annotated edition makes Dostoevsky’s novel accessible to a new generation of listeners:

It significantly economizes the length of the novel by excising over one-hundred thousand words.
An Introductory Essay and a Guide to Russian Patronymics and Character Names explore the historical context in which the work was written, its literary genre, and other key elements of the story.
New annotations help listeners understand cultural, historical, and literary references across the text.
New translations of all passages in French, German, and Latin in this revised edition make the novel maximally available to listeners at all levels.


Demons is Dostoevsky’s profound and moving novel of politics, psychology, and social upheaval. Exploring how ideas come to possess those who espouse them, this is a story of unforgettable characters who pass through times of love, enlightenment, betrayal, and tragedy. Their story and the story of their life together show how the choices they make in turn make a fabric of destiny and how the fate of their people rests on the nature of an idea.

Marc Slonim comments that Demons “is not only a novel about revolution, crime, atheism, religion, strong men, underground men, and the Russian past and present. It is . . . one of the most captivating and thrilling tales of modern literature.”

Ronald Hingley declares Demons “one of humanity’s most impressive achievements—perhaps even its supreme achievement—in the art of prose fiction.”