The Idiot - (Penguin Classics) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The most autobiographical novel by the author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov--and the namesake of Elif Batuman's debut novel, The Idiot

Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin-- known as the "idiot"--pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, Dostoyevsky portrays the purity of "a truly beautiful soul" and explores the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.

David McDuff's translation brilliantly captures the novel's idiosyncratic and dream-like language and the nervous, elliptic flow of the narrative. This edition also contains an introduction by William Mills Todd III, which is a fascinating examination of the pressures on Dostoyevsky as he wrote the story of his Christ-like hero.

Review Quotes

"A book that manages like no other to plunge fearlessly into suffering while at the same time illuminating the enduring, almost unspeakable beauty of the human." --Laurie Sheck, The Atlantic

"One of the most excoriating, compelling, and remarkable books ever written: and without question one of the greatest." --A. C. Grayling

"A masterpiece . . . a fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils. . . . [an] excellent new translation." --The Guardian

"McDuff's language is rich and alive." --The New York Times Book Review

"[The Idiot's] narrative is so compelling." --Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

About the Author

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer whose novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov rank among the greatest of the nineteenth century.

David McDuff (translator) has translated many works of nineteenth-century Russian literature, including works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Leskov for Penguin Classics.

William Mills Todd III (introducer) is a professor of Slavic languages at Harvard.