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.
In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. 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.
From award-winning translators, a masterful new translationnever before publishedof the novel in which Fyodor Dostoevsky set out to portray a truly beautiful soul. 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. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonskys masterful translation of The Idiot is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English. The Idiot is both a powerful indictment of that society and a rich and gripping masterpiece. As is true of their previous translations of the works Dostoevsky and Gogol, this will be the definitive edition of The Idiot for years to come.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's masterful translation of The Idiot is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.Īfter his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. 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. The Idiot is both a powerful indictment of that society and a rich and gripping masterpiece. 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. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. 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. Just two weeks after completing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its centre.
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