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Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive epileptic Prince Myshkin - the titular ''idiot'' - pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife, and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. Inspired by an image of Christ''s suffering, Dostoyevsky sought to portray in Prince Myshkin the purity of a ''truly beautiful soul'' and explore 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.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow. From 1849-54 he lived in a convict prison, and in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His other works available in Penguin Classics include Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and Demons.
If you enjoyed The Idiot, you might like Anton Chekhov''s Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.
''McDuff''s language is rich and alive''
The New York Times Book Review
''[The Idiot''s] ... narrative is so compelling''
Rowan Williams<>
