Other Fiction Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Possessed. V1. 20 Apr 2010

In this novel Dostoesvsky examines the nihilist movement that arose in Russia in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is something of a companion piece to the novel*Fathers and Sons*by Turgenev. The authors of both novels cast a critical eye on the nihilist movement as an amoral alternative to the traditional Russian orthodoxy that was in decline among the intelligentsia at that time. In my opinion they were accurate in this assessment as the morality of Lenin and Stalin came out of this movement.

There is a discussion I've always found interesting concerning the fear of death, particularly as regarding suicide, in Part 1, Chapter 3, Section VIII. Fear of pain during the process of death? Even when the possibility of pain can be eliminated? Fear of the afterlife? Because man loves life? Even when life is so miserable that suicide seems preferable?

I would not rate this novel as highly as Crime and Punishment, Dostoesvsky's masterpiece. It is as good a novel as The Brothers Karamazov though. Thus ends my editorial opinions.

This e-book was created for mobileread.com users by Hamlet53. The original source material was obtained from Project Gutenberg. I did not conduct a through proof reading of the text. I did run the text through a spelling check and in that process caught a number of errors including one very big one. I managed to catch something that in my experience is unusual with the downloads available from Project Gutenberg, what with all the reviews normally conducted, and that is a long (covering a couple of pages) paragraph of content missing. I found this when comparing to the PDF of the book scan and it was so in all formats available for download [from Project Gutenberg].

I also added 'curly quotes' back into the document; I prefer the indication as to whether a string of dialogue is starting or ending. I took a close look at the passages in French for errors and to restore graves, acutes, circumflexes, etc.

It should be noted that this version of the novel [in English] is the translation by Constance Garnett that is in the public domain. Some later translations include an additional chapter not included the novel when it was first published.

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