Fyodor Dostoevsky inspiration for his writing. They continued their trip through Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe. They spent five weeks in Baden-Baden, where Dostoevsky had a quarrel with Turgenev and again lost much money at the roulette table. The couple travelled on to Geneva. In September 1867, Dostoevsky began work on "The Idiot", and after a prolonged planning process that bore little resemblance to the published novel, he eventually managed to write the first 100 pages in only 23 days; the serialisation began in "The Russian Messenger "in January 1868. Their first child, Sonya, had been conceived in Baden-Baden, and
Demons (Dostoevsky novel) a student at the academy, and had been much interested in his rejection of radicalism and exhortation of the Russian Orthodox Church and the House of Romanov as the true custodians of Russia's destiny. He was horrified to hear of Ivanov's murder by the Nechayevists, and vowed to write a political novel about what he called "the most important problem of our time." Prior to this Dostoevsky had been working on a philosophical novel (entitled 'The Life of a Great Sinner') examining the psychological and moral implications of atheism. The political polemic and parts of the philosophical novel were merged