Name: The Idiot
Rating: 4.15483870967742 (155 reviews)
ISBN: 9781434457387

Frank J. Morlock

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Prince Myshkin, a sort of holy fool, stumbles into a sordid love triangle when he returns from exile to Russia. Myskhin means well, but he's simply too good for this world, and his well-meaning intentions bring disaster on himself and those he loves. Based on the classic novel, The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

A Play in Three Acts

The Idiot

Translated by David Magarshack

Idiot

Thanks bro good evening how was church time with her friend at school now too and I'm. Sorry but I'm sorry please take this important care about you.

Azamat Shamuzafarov

Fantastic book. The contrast with Kafka’s writing and personality really brings out Dostoevsky’s characteristics in his pieces.

Keisha Vincent

Anna Brailovsky

In an attempt to woo two wholesome women--Natasya and Aglaia--the lovesick Prince Myshkin's good deeds are overshadowed by Ganya, the dishonest man of interest to the women, in this volume that includes an introduction and notes.

andrea valentina 

Este libro estuvo muy bueno. Siento que no hay palabras en mi vocabulario para expresar cuánto me gustó.

The idiot

It was hard to get through the book at many points, as most Russian lit is, but it was not in vain!! The ending was so.., expected yet surprising. I can't explain how my heart is beating right now. It's crazy! This book was genuinely so good and I am way more attached to the characters than any other book. Nastasya Filippovna was such an amazing and complex character, it was hard not to draw some connections to my life from her! Myshkin was such a beloved character from beginning to end even though I questioned his motives at one point. His pure goodness was genuine and such a treasure, but it only got used and bankrupted. I loved how the ending of his story brought us back to where he was. I loved all of it. It was an amazing trip yet again and I am forever glad I started this book.

laila

As always! Dostoyevsky never disappoints

It was hard to get through the book at many points, as most Russian lit is, but it was not in vain!! The ending was so.., expected yet surprising. I can't explain how my heart is beating right now. It's crazy! This book was genuinely so good and I am way more attached to the characters than any other book. Nastasya Filippovna was such an amazing and complex character, it was hard not to draw some connections to my life from her! Myshkin was such a beloved character from beginning to end even though I questioned his motives at one point. His pure goodness was genuine and such a treasure, but it only got used and bankrupted. I loved how the ending of his story brought us back to where he was. I loved all of it. It was an amazing trip yet again and I am forever glad I started this book.

Eva Martin

A novel of innocence and iniquity, love and murder, by the nineteenth-century Russian author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. After several years in a Swiss sanatorium, twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin returns to Russian society to collect his rightful inheritance. But he soon crosses paths with the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose desire for Nastasya Filippovna will set the three of them on a tragic course. As author Fyodor Dostoevsky traces the effect of Myshkin’s innocence on the people around him in St. Petersburg, scandal escalates to murder . . . “I think The Idiot to be a masterpiece—flawed, occasionally tedious or overwrought, like many masterpieces—but a fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils. In those two novels, as in the simpler Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky had plots and political and religious ideas working together. In The Idiot he is straining to grasp a story and a character converting themselves from Gothic to Saint’s Life on the run. What makes the greatness is double—the character of the prince, and a powerful series of confrontations with death. The true subject of The Idiot is the imminence and immanence of death.” —A. S. Byatt, The Guardian “Nothing is outside Dostoevsky’s province. . . . Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.” —Virginia Woolf

I enjoyed this book immensely at the beginning, but then it really dropped off in the middle only to really ramp up with maybe 70 - 100 pages left. Looking forward to the next Dostoyevsky book, he can certainly spin a tale. 

Mark Florczyk

alina s

(Prince Myshkin does something nice)
All the Rich people: “my god that man is an idiot!”

jiaqi kang

Me: *finishes book* *extended silence* *looks up sparknotes because What Is Going On Here On This Day*

Safiya 

I'm still not over the tragedy, hopefully in the coming days I'd be more lucid to write a review :)
Originally read in French, since it seems it is the closest to Russian formulations.
A lyrical plea for the kind hearted and beauty seekers, you are all idiots... as seen by society. 
And that is the core of the story, when one is too good for his own sake!

Diana Platgalve

Simply a masterpiece! Covering the big questions of life and making you...reflect on your idiotic actions through this profound characters.

Prince Myshkin, a good yet simple man, is out of place in the corrupt world created by Russia's ruling class.

Stavros Kosmas

What I will be able to take with me from this heart wrenching work, is that the pure, the absolute innocent, the selfless and the saint have no place in this world. And if they happen to exist within it, they will inevitably be scrutinized, manipulated and violated. Because such is the nature of our world, and is therefore doomed.

If I was limited to use only term to described this book it would most definitely be ‘chaotic’.

This is the sixth of Dostoevsky’s works that I’ve read and while there were distinct similarities to his other stories, this one stood out to me as being the most different that I’ve come across so far.

The book follows Prince Myshkin, a young man returning to Russian society after spending time in Switzerland due his epilepsy, for which he is often referred to as an ‘idiot’. 

Interestingly, Dostoevsky himself suffered from epilepsy, and I often wondered if there were similarities between them. However, as I got deeper into the story I came to realise that Myshkin is labelled as an idiot not because of his condition, but due to his utter lack of common sense and pride.

The fact that Dostoevsky can make me sympathise and relate to the murderer Roskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, and yet completely dislike the ‘perfect man’ which Prince Myshkin represents, truly shows what an incredible writer he was. 

Through the novel Myshkin entangles himself in a social network of awful characters who continuously manipulate and toy with him. I did feel sorry for him at the beginning, but by the end of the book I was mostly just frustrated by his need to be a perfect Christ-like figure who loves and accepts all unconditionally. 

While The Idiot is not my favourite of Dostoevsky’s, it is an incredible imagining of the disastrous effects of an ideal human being in the real world.

The Idiot A Play in Three Acts

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