29 h 2 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 29 h 2 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the promise of a better world becomes a reason to tear everything apart?
In a quiet provincial town, Pyotr Verkhovensky gathers conspirators and works to stir up chaos. Nikolai Stavrogin, a magnetic aristocrat with a scandalous past, draws people toward him while seeming unable to believe in anything. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed: Or, The Devils, private troubles feed a growing political fever.
Around them stand an aging liberal scholar, a strong-willed widow, and people wrestling with faith and freedom. Ivan Shatov clings to belief after his radical past; Aleksei Kirillov pursues an extreme argument about God. Through gossip, arguments, and gathering suspense, Dostoyevsky asks what happens when conviction loses touch with care for other people.
What you’ll discover
- The machinery of extremism Watch Pyotr turn restless ideas into a conspiracy that threatens the town around him.
- A troubling human magnet Meet Stavrogin, whose charm draws others close while his lack of belief keeps him apart.
- Faith under pressure Follow Shatov and Kirillov into arguments where belief and freedom become intensely personal.
- Dark comedy and dread Enter a crowded world where vanity, gossip, and grand ideals sit beside growing danger.
- Pride beneath the politics Look beyond political slogans to the shame, boredom, and longing that shape these lives.
Who will love it
Readers who love big novels about ideas and the people who live by them will feel at home here. It suits anyone drawn to political drama, dark comedy, and characters who argue about God, Russia, and freedom late into the night.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A tutor and his patroness share a strange bond
- Stavrogin returns as a handsome, unsettling stranger
- Stepan's circle gathers restless, quarrelsome men
- A lame woman and a poet-captain shake the town
- Pyotr arrives with a plan and a smile
- Two men follow single ideas to the edge
- A secret meeting shows how theory turns to force
- Ideas can take possession of a person's mind
- Fathers and sons repeat the same vanity
- A chronicler's comic voice keeps horror close
Who’s who
- Stepan Trofimovitch VerhovenskyA vain, tearful scholar who has lived twenty years on Varvara Petrovna's estate and wants to be seen as a persecuted liberal and a great mind.
- Varvara Petrovna StavroginA wealthy, commanding widow who rules her household, limits her public influence, holds on to her old friend and her son, and cannot bear to be deceived.
- Nikolay StavroginHer only son, a handsome, calm, unreadable man whom everyone wants to follow, and who seems to want nothing at all.
- Pyotr Stepanovitch VerhovenskyStepan's quick, talkative son, who flatters the town's leaders and secretly builds a revolutionary circle with himself in command.
- Ivan ShatovA shaggy former serf who has swung from socialism to a fierce faith in the Russian people and longs for someone to lead.
- Alexey KirillovA gentle engineer who loves children and tea, and is bent on proving human freedom through one final act.
- Captain LebyadkinA giant, drunken self-styled poet who bullies his lame sister and craves money, praise, and a place in high society.
- Lizaveta NikolaevnaA proud, restless young woman who rides every day, is bound to Stavrogin by a hidden past, and searches for her own balance.
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The Possessed: Or, The Devils
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 1871
A tearful old tutor and a drunken poet-captain meet a stranger with a plan to set a quiet Russian town ablaze.
ChallengingOver 20 hours to readEspañol
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In short
Picture a quiet provincial town where a tearful old scholar poses as a martyr, a wealthy widow rules every drawing room, and a drunken captain writes love poems to a lady on horseback. Then a stranger steps off the road with a plan and a smile.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A tutor and his patroness share a strange bond
The novel opens with Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky, a scholar who has published almost nothing. For twenty years he has lived on the estate of Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, a rich general's widow. He plays a persecuted liberal, though the police never watched him at all.
She first hired him to shape her only son. She kept him on, designed his long black coat, and reads every tearful letter he writes her from the next room. She never answers. She simply greets him the next morning as if nothing had happened.
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Also in the Dostoevsky Book Set: Four Novels
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 9 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1871
- Language
- Español
- Reading time
- 18 h 55 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Possessed: Or, The Devils. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-possessed-or-the-devils.
Dostoyevsky, F. (2026). The possessed: Or, the devils. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-possessed-or-the-devils (Original work published 1871)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Possessed: Or, The Devils. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-possessed-or-the-devils.
@book{dostoyevsky2026possessed,
author = {Dostoyevsky, Fyodor},
title = {The Possessed: Or, The Devils},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-possessed-or-the-devils},
note = {First published 1871}
}
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What is The Possessed about?
It follows a provincial Russian town where old liberals, young radicals, and a charming schemer collide. Their ideas about God, Russia, and freedom turn from talk into action, and the story shows what those ideas do to the people who hold them.
Why is it also called The Devils?
The Russian title can be rendered as Demons or Devils. It refers to the epigraph from Luke, where demons leave a man and enter a herd of pigs, a picture of ideas that seize a person or a society.
Who is Nikolay Stavrogin?
He is Varvara Petrovna's only son, a handsome, strong, and unsettling man who returns to town after wild years in Petersburg. Others look to him as a leader, and each of them wants something from him that he does not give.
The author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–1881 · Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist born in Moscow in 1821. He lived in Saint Petersburg and spent years in Siberia after his arrest in 1849. He wrote Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868–1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880). He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.
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