Young Pyotr Stepanovitch returns to the small town of his father and attempts to start a revolution that will ultimately remake the very fabric of society and bring forth a new social and political order. In order to realize his plan, Pyotr recruits a few men into his group, who are believed to be one cell among many spread throughout the country.

A brooding, prophetic tale of ideology gone monstrous, this sprawling novel remains one of literature's most searching portraits of fanaticism and the human cost of revolutionary fervor.

Demons is told by a semi-omniscient narrator, and focuses mainly on the lives of middle- and upper-class Russians. The exact goals of the characters are not made very clear, and they serve primarily as commentary on contemporary Russian society and ideas. Some of the characters were likely based on real people.

The episode of Jesus' exorcism of Legion in the Synoptic Gospels is the source of the allegorical title of the book; the "demons" are in reference to the nihilistic and revolutionary ideas that "possess" the conspirators (and Russia herself). The novel's title has alternately been translated as The Possessed and The Devils.

Although described by some of Dostoevsky's contemporaries as too unrealistic, the novel was generally well-received and is considered one of his most important works after his return from Siberian exile. Like other Dostoevsky novels, it was first serialized in The Russian Messenger; it was later published as a book in 1873.