Product Description
by Thomas Beyer (Author), Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Author)
A new revised and abridged translation of Dostoevsky's 1872 novel, The Possessed (also known in English as Devils or Demons). Perhaps the most complicated and for non-Russians the most confusing of Dostoevsky's major novels, as much as the novel reflected its times, it still is relevant today exploring the danger of idealism and liberalism turning increasingly to violence when it lacks spiritual direction. Dostoevsky's questions and novel are as relevant today as they were almost 150 years ago. This translated edition of The Possessed has been revised and abridged by Thomas Beyer so that readers may more easily follow the story and themes of the original, without sacrificing the "essential Dostoevsky." Thomas Beyer is the C.V. Starr Professor of Russian at Middlebury College in Vermont where he has been reading and teaching Dostoevsky for the past forty years.
Author Biography
Thomas R. Beyer Jr was born in 1947 in Brooklyn, New York where he attended Xaverian HS. He is a graduate of Georgetown University (1969) and the University of Kansas (1974). For the past 42 years he has been a Professor of Russian at Middlebury College in Vermont. He is the author of over a dozen books to learn Russian, and several translations of the Russian writer Andrei Bely. Considered an expert on Russian writers in emigration in Germany and the United States, Professor Beyer has lectured extensively in Russia, Germany and the United States. For the past few years he has offered seminars on the works of Dan Brown designed to permit students and readers separate fact from fiction. He has published revised and abridged versions of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov
