'Demons' at 150

Jacob Howland 'On Dostoevsky’s prophetic tale of societal decay' at The New Criterion.

"Like characters in a Kafka story, the oligarchs and conspirators of Demons tremble before distant centers of authority and power from which they expect to receive some final judgment. The filaments of imagination that bind them to these mysterious centers are vanishingly thin, spun from their own slavish instincts and fantastic desires—that is, from nothing—but strong enough to make them feel 'caught like flies in the web of a huge spider.'"

See Dostoevsky, "White Nights" in Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 3, and The Brothers Karamazov in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 52, (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 52.