Author(s): Fyodor Dostoevsky

General Fiction

Just two weeks after completing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its centre. In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanitorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate to murder, as Dostoevsky’s ‘positively beautiful man’ clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his innocence and moral idealism. The Idiot is both a powerful indictment of that society and a rich and gripping masterpiece. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation - fresh, crisp and faithful to the original (bumps and blemishes included) - brings the story of Prince Myshkin to new life.