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The Possessed

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About this listen

Also known as Demons, The Possessed is a powerful socio-political novel about revolutionary ideas and the radicals behind them. It follows the career of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, a political terrorist who leads a group of nihilists on a demonic quest for societal breakdown. They are consumed by their desires and ideals, and have surrendered themselves fully to the darkness of their "demons". This possession leads them to engulf a quiet provincial town and subject it to a storm of violence. Inspired by a real political killing in 1869, the book is an impassioned response to the ideologies of European liberalism and nihilism, which threatened Russian Orthodoxy; it eerily predicted the Russian Revolution, which would take place 50 years later. Funny, shocking, and tragic, it is a profound and affecting work with deep philosophical discourses about God, human freedom and political revolution.

Translation by Constance Garnett; appendix translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2017 Naxos AudioBooks Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction Russia Biography Funny Inspiring Tear-jerking
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The reader makes this complex novel much easier to follow. You still might to listen with a copy at hand though.

simply superb

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a great translation and narration . much preferred listening to it than reading it as it was easier to keep track of the characters

great reading

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This is exactly what you expect from dostoyevsky. A really troubling story, very troubled characters and, each with something so uncomfortably relatable about them. The addition of the initially unpublished chapter placed at the end of the book feels incredibly meaningful and powerful that I cannot imagine it having the same effect if it were in its normal place.

Really special

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I was expecting a lot from this because it's allegedly a masterpiece of world literature.

Alas, I don't have the patience to listen to 11 and a half hours only for next to NOTHING to have happened.

I am nearly half way through and not once has this book gripped me or made me want to read on.

Crime and punishment was amazing and the Brothers Karamazov was good. Even Notes from Underground was decent. But I'm done with this one I'm afraid.

As ever the performance is superb

Disappointing

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