The Little Demon

In an unnamed Russian provincial town, the schoolmaster Ardalyon Peredonov claws his way toward a promotion he believes he has been promised, and slowly loses his mind in the process. Suspicious of everyone, cruel to his students, and stalked by a grey, twitching phantom he calls the nedotykomka, he becomes Sologub’s portrait of pure pettiness and spite. A lighter counter-story follows the schoolboy Sasha and the flirtatious Lyudmila, whose games shadow Peredonov’s growing paranoia. Published in 1907, the novel became one of the most widely read works of Russian Symbolism, admired for turning provincial dullness and malice into something genuinely nightmarish. This free PDF and EPUB edition brings Sologub’s dark satire to new readers.