At 714 pages long, Demons by Dostoevsky easily surpasses any fiction I have ever read, and would probably read in the future. Divided into 3 parts plus an extra chapter, Demons is by far the most dramatic and heaviest in themes of the works by Dostoevsky I have attempted, so much so that by the second half of Part 3, I felt I could no longer follow the narrative closely and was skimming over the last parts solely to finish the book for the sake of it.
Written before the October Revolution that completely upended Imperial Russia, Demons is overly dramatic yet scarily prophetic in its prediction of the collapse of society as the Russians knew it by people proclaiming to be progressive and scornful of the society in which they were regarded as midgets.
The character of Pyotr Stepanovich was for me particularly difficult to follow, until I realised what he stood for. It was rather revealing that instead of openly and honestly convincing people of the benefits of the world he wanted to bring about, Pyotr instead manipulated his way into high society to cause chaos and mayhem.
Demons is a books that requires multiple readings to carefully make sense of the worlds of the different characters and their intertwining motivations and manipulations.
For now, I feel that I am far too overwhelmed by Demons, and would be putting aside further Dostoevskys in search of something less encompassing.
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