There is also a perfectly good Russian word for devils, and it is not the word Dostoevsky chose to use. Had Dostoevsky wanted to name this work “The Possessed,” he could easily have done so, Russian having an exact equivalent. The Russian word means evil spirits, not the people possessed by them. Do we need a fifth? Given the quality of the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, the answer is most definitely yes. A more recent translator, Andrew MacAndrew, has kept it two others, David Magarshack and Michael Katz, have-independently-called the work “The Devils.” All four versions are currently in print. “Demons,” first published in 1871-72, and Dostoevsky’s last major novel before “The Brothers Karamazov,” is the work we have commonly known in English as “The Possessed.” Such is the title Constance Garnett gave to her translation of the novel (its first, though it came out more than 40 years after the original). No, a new Dostoevsky novel has not been discovered.
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