Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I read this book because I have recently been really interested in the history of the twentieth century and how all of the craziness unfolded and escalated to the point where we almost nuked ourselves to oblivion.
In school we learned a lot about WW2 and particularly the Holocaust, but I learned nothing about events in Russia or China for example which also resulted in tens of millions of deaths.
I have also been curious about the ideology behind some of the catastrophe’s as it seems like virtually everyone agrees the ideology behind the Nazi party was deplorable (I say virtually because unfortunately there appears to be more people who claim to be Nazi’s popping up), but it seems like there is more grey area behind Communist movements. Today there are groups of people who would love to scrap our current structures and adopt a communistic system, and it seems that the general public feels indifferent to people who feel that way. I don’t quite understand why, and hope to learn more about it this year. I read The Communist Manifesto recently and have a number other books in queue on the subject.
The Demons is a fiction, but is based on actual events and many of the characters were modelled after real people. It is said to be a great commentary and prophecy for the twentieth century and spoke directly to the ideology that the author felt would lead to devastation. It is essentially a warning against revolutionary and nihilistic thought. The book wasn’t received well in Russia at the time, which in hindsight makes sense.
Super duper honesty moment. I had little to no idea what was happening most of the time I was reading this. First issue: I read on my phone as my library at the time didn’t have a copy. Reading such a complex book on my phone was very difficult and I found I couldn’t focus to the level that this book demanded. I won’t be making that mistake again.
Second issue: This book was a really difficult read for me in general. Older books can be challenging as the language doesn’t flow as you’d expect it to today so sometimes sentences get lost on me, unless I go back and re-read them slowly, which I didn’t invest the time to do.
Third issue: Apparently this book is notorious for being very slow for a long time, and I’d have to agree. I’d say the first three hundred pages felt as if nothing happened other than learning some of the characters in the book. It was incredibly difficult to follow with the challenges I listed above compounded by the fact that it felt very boring.
So a bit of a swing and a miss for me here, which was probably mostly my fault. Maybe I will return to this book someday when I have a physical copy, and a lot of free time to fully digest this.