The Idiot

The Idiot - Hardcover

$32.00
$32.00
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The Idiot
  • The Idiot
The Idiot - Hardcover

The Idiot - Hardcover

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
$32.00
$32.00

Book Overview

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.
ISBN9780241739822
Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
PublisherPenguin Classics
GenreLiterature
FormatHardcover
PublishedDecember 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages784
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceTeens & young adults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Classics Fiction Literary Psychological

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More by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

The Friend of the Family: Or, the Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitantsâ - Paperback

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

About Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81) was educated in Moscow and at the School of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg, where he spent four years. In 1846, he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk; it was an immediate critical and popular success. This was followed by short stories and the novel The Double. While at work on Netochka Nezvanova, the twenty-seven-year-old author was arrested for belonging to a young socialist group. He was tried and condemned to death, but at the last moment his sentence was commuted to prison in Siberia. He spent four years in the penal settlement as Omsk. In 1859, he was granted full amnesty and allowed to return to St. Petersburg. In the fourteen years before his death, Dostoyevsky produced his greatest works, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. The last was published a year before his death.

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