General Press

Fyodor Dostoevsky

After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and ‘be among people’. Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant's son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this ‘positively beautiful man’ on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.

The Idiot

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.

michaela bakajsova

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.

Der Idiot

Nina Ding

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

Wassila fajr

Absolutely enjoyable, every character was interesting especially the main character, the prince was very likeable 👍

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!

Arden Kowalski

If Crime and Punishment transcends the limitations of the novel, The Idiot defines it in its strongest form. It's all too easy to compare these works when they're all you've read of Dostoyevsky, but the commonality is quite minimal. Both feature well-communicated themes, extensive character monologues, and that particular prose style which is so hard to recreate in English. Hence, this is easy to say: Crime and Punishment is the better work. Now that the necessity of comparison is out of the way, let's get on with the review.

The Idiot is one of the strangest books I've read in my time. It doesn't have much of a straightforward, linear plot, but instead leaps through hoops and makes sharp turns in an uncanny representation of real life. We start with a scene on a train and the promise of past idiocy, we end on the image of a parting and the promise of future idiocy. There's a wealth of literary device, reference, and rhetoric waiting to be exploited by the reader in the odd six hundred pages between.

But when you're reading the book—at least this is my experience—it doesn't appear as though Dostoyevsky is reciting or perhaps inventing a sermon on Russian society. Rather, he invents characters that are fully developed, he describes their lives, and carefully weaves a thread of interest through the weighty exposition. There are no theatrics in this book; the fits are infrequent, no bombs go off, and it's this simple monotony that seems to put off many readers. I think you either like this book or you don't, it's pretty polarizing.

I definitely liked it, as my rating should suggest. I spent four days reading this book, eager to soak up every phrase, every turn of character, to internalize even the most minor players and their specific outlooks. What drives other people off drew me in, with an impression not of intense boredom but of deep enjoyment and interest. I wish this book were longer, honestly, because I want to live in it longer.

Much has been said about the incredible prose in this book, about the philosophical and political commentary (much of which we can apply to 21st century North America: check out that excellent dialogue on liberalism), but I want to draw the reader's attention to the aspect of this book that matters the most to me. It is, of course, the characters, the sharply drawn and well-defined cast of idiots. No matter how few pages I spent with a character, I felt like I knew them, like if someone asked me to write a description of the novel from their perspective I could get inside their head and do it with no further research. It's really, really good writing, to put it in almost offensively simple words.

The Idiot is phenomenal, it's an epic, it's a triumph. I will almost certainly revisit this novel; I only wish I had gotten more time reading it to begin with. Next up from Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov, which I am beyond excited to read.


  Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.


P.S. In the interest of full transparency, because I am of course not a Russian speaker, I read the translation by Henry and Olga Carlisle and found it to be very good.

Diana Platgalve

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

Анастасия Розова

*Read for class.

3.75/5

Wow, finally something I actually quite liked by Dostoevsky!

RTC, maybe... If I can formulate some words.

Gerda Šalengaitė

Po kelių metų petraukos vėl grįžtu prie Dostojevskio. Bijojau, kad mano suvokimas bus pasikeitęs, o Dostojevskio rašymas manęs nebevilios. Laimei, taip neatsitiko. Lūkesčiai dideli, beveik viskas perskaityta, liko tik  Idiotas . Ir jis manęs nenuvylė, drįstu teigti, kad dabar tai mano mėgstamiausia Dostojevskio knyga. Kunigaikštis Myškinas nelabai panašus į kitus pagrindinius veikėjus Dostojevskio romanuose, nebent į Aliošą, bet man Myškinas daug labiau patiko. Jis toks soft boi, kad tiesiog neįmanoma neįsimylėti. Aš, kaip ir kiti knygos veikėjai, tikrai jį įsimylėjau. Gaila, kad taip liūdnai baigėsi, šįkart tikrai norėjau laimingos pabaigos. Žmogus, kuris visą gyvenimą sekė savo širdį ir darė tai, kas manė yra geriausia ir doriausia, tikrai nusipelnė laimės. Deja.

Hala Abdulaziz 

Gosh I’m honestly so relieved that i finished it ! 
I’m so disappointed, I thought I was going love this book; and maybe it’s my fault and I shouldn’t have picked it as one of the firsts I read by Dostovsky. 

My main problem with this book is the characters, they were so inconsistent that you can’t possibly know what kind of characters they are. Every time i thought i’m getting to know a certain character more the book throws that out of the window and I keep standing there like “ what !!?” 
I’m a big character driven reader, if you manage to make me attached to the characters you’ve done your job; but if you make me keep searching and guessing the whole way through it’s not gonna be a fun time for me. 
I can’t even say “ this character’s actions are out of character “ because it would imply that we have an established character from the beginning, which we didn’t. 
I don’t even know if i’m making any sense but this really pumped me out. 
The one thing I actually liked in this book is the philosophical aspect, there were A LOT of discussions and conversation that took place and some of them were actually interesting; it felt like we were discussing these things with the author himself. 
Even though this book bored the hell out of me, I’ll try his other works; And I’m hopeful .

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.

Oana

It's really different from 'Crime and Punishment', but it still has many moral dilemmas and somehow hidden meanings, which makes it even more enjoyable. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Dostoievski's style: dark, complicated, makes you ask yourself different existential and moral questions, has despicable characters that make you feel sorry for them at some point etc.

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.

Draculelle

Der Idiot. (Dünndruck).

Katharina

weli 

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 notorius kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya.

The Idiot

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