The Petty Demon

In one word: adequate. You get The Petty Demon on your kindle, which is great. The book itself would get a 5 star review from me, especially as a Russian Literature major. But the kindle version of this book is woefully under-edited. There are numerous typos and errors in which a period is replaced by a comma or other form of punctuation, which can be very confusing. This novel deserves a better kindle version.

One of my favorite pieces of Russian literature. When speaking to friends who grew up in the Soviet Union, most have never heard of this. A shame if one of literature's more interesting main characters were forgotten. Give it a read, team.

Many grammatical and spelling issues in the digital version but otherwise a very good novel.

Published just after the turn of the 20th century, Sologub's symbolist masterpiece tells the tale of petty careerist aspirations manifested most predominantly by the paranoid, dull, self-preserving egoist Peredonov. The story itself is widely imbued with mythic allusions and folk references all enshrouded in the thick black-velvet smog of a backwoods black comedy. Peredonov a rural pedagogue, more antagonist than protagonist, but hero all the same, frets only of 'denunciations' and that which will stray his course from its unshakeable aspiration of achieving the rank of town inspector. This version comes with a lengthy, though informative and beneficial in regards to contextualization, introduction by the translator, the author's outrightly humorous forewords to the first editions, a minimal amount of footnotes that inform without being a work of historical nonfiction themselves, appendicized textual variants and a more than significant collection of critical publications in review of the work itself. I must note that the number of silly typos is nearly a distraction unto itself; this version having all the features of the much acclaimed "norton critical editions" of literature classics, it seems such blunders would have been caught. Nevertheless, coming from a Russian literature in specific (and world literature in general) enthuse, this is one of my favorite works of any time period. The style reminds me of Gogol's frolicking absurdity equally parsed with the brooding neurosis of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. Recommended on all accounts.

One of the best books I've ever read, citations done well

there are two main characters here. perodonov and the village. P is not quite a sympathetic figure. he starts about being pathetic and patronizing. he is led to believe some untrue things which makes his actions bizzare to the village, and therefore tension starts. between ambition and reality and lack of acceptance, p starts losing his sanity. the book is at times really great, but the plot isn't carried out masterly, and some of the things in the book seem to lack relevance in the end.