[1] The novel recounts the story of the sadist schoolteacher Peredonov in an unnamed Russian provincial town.

Throughout the novel Peredonov struggles to be promoted to governmental inspector of his province, starts becoming paranoid, and hallucinates a mysterious little demon Nedotykomka.

The realistic and satirical depiction of Russian provincial life and the omniscient third-person narrative allowed Sologub to combine his Symbolist tendencies and the tradition of Russian Realism in which he engaged throughout his earlier novels, a style similar to Maupassant's fantastic realism.

According to Mirsky, Peredonov forms a "trinity" together with Fyodor Dostoevsky's Foma Opiskin and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's Porfiry Golovlyov.

He torments his students, derives erotic satisfaction from watching them kneel to pray, and systematically befouls his apartment before leaving it as part of his generalized spite against the universe.