Demons

Dostoevsky first conceived of this book as 'novel-pamphlet' in which he intended to 'say everything' about Russia's new liberal reformers, whom he loathed - particularly the group of anti-Czarist political terrorists known as Nihilists. During the winter of 1869 this group, in the course of plotting destruction, murdred on of their own; this event and the ensuing trial became the nucleus of Dostoevsky's unfolding masterwork.