The Idiot

Dostoyevskys great novel of suffering and sickness, innocence and greed

Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve 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 Christs 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 McDuffs translation brilliantly captures the novels 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.

If you enjoyed The Idiot, you might like Anton Chekhovs Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

McDuffs language is rich and alive
The New York Times Book Review

[The Idiots] ... narrative is so compelling
Rowan Williams