What have you been reading? (10/31)

Been reading Demons by Dostoevsky. This my third Dostoevsky's book: the other two being Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. So I'm quite used to Dostoevsky's polyphonic style of having the characters' dialogues taking over the narration.

Demons is basically about how foreign (mainly Western) ideas are 'possessing' the intelligentsias in pre-revolutionary Russia. From what I've read so far, Dostoevsky sets to challenge the revolutionary ideas as being dangerous to the Russian people, as those ideas can lead to nihilism. Witness the destructive nature of the Soviet state, more so under Stalin.

This book somehow connects to me on a personal level. I'm a student from a non-Western culture who flirts with anarcho-communist philosophy, especially after having a disappointing stint in a Muslim Brotherhood-esque student movement. There's are ideological clashes within me, between the religiously conservative part of me (which rules my outer behaviour) and the radically subversive elements in myself (that rules my thinking). A revolution is brewing within me that sets to overthrow the religious me anytime soon. So I'm reading Demons just to find an answer on whether I should quell the revolutionary impulse, or somehow find a way to reconcile the religious and the revolutionary tendency.

/r/literature Thread