Biesy with delivery to Ireland

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81) was a Russian writer, regarded as one of the masters of world literature and, alongside Tolstoy, perhaps the best-known writer from Russia. A master of the psychological novel. His most distinguished works include Zbrodnia i kara, Bracia Karamazow, Idiota and, indeed, Biesy.
In Biesy, Dostoevsky's genius revealed itself as a gift for prophecy. Written half a century before the Bolshevik revolution, the novel depicts the grim fate of a society surrendered to the rule of grim ideologies. Dostoevsky considered the “devils” of his own day to be revolutionaries and nihilists of every stripe, but also Westernisers (zapadniki) and those who abandon Christianity in the name of liberal ideas. Here we have a whole array of repugnant characters, beginning with Piotr Wierchowieński (an amoral master of blackmail and deceit, modelled directly on the leading revolutionary of the time, Sergey Nechayev), through Mikołaj Stawrogin, a representative of the bored gentry/aristocracy, who seduces women but also leads his young friends intellectually astray, and readily changes his values and views.
Although seemingly more likeable than Wiechowieński, Stawrogin appears to be an even more sinister figure. And then there is Szygalow, who designs a future totalitarian state, and the exceptionally gloomy figure of the engineer Alieksiej Kiryłłow. Yet Dostoevsky takes aim not only at these “relatively young devils” but also at the “old” ones: Western-minded Westernisers and naive liberals such as Karmazynow or, above all, Piotr's father, Stiepan Wierchowieński, enraptured by Western progressiveness. Biesy is a very clear statement of Dostoevsky's position in his polemic with both the revolutionaries and Russian liberals such as Hercen and Turgieniew, from an entirely opposing standpoint: a world without God and values is, in the author's view, a world doomed to collapse. Marked by psychological depth and pessimistic about human nature, Dostoevsky's argument shows that the only path to improving human relations is faith, hope and love.