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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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The Idiot (Penguin Classics) Paperback – August 31, 2004

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Author), David McDuff (Translator), William Mills Todd (Introduction)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,952 ratings
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The most autobiographical novel by the author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov—and the namesake of Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot
 
Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin— known as the “idiot”—pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, Dostoyevsky portrays the purity of “a truly beautiful soul” and explores the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.
 
David McDuff's translation brilliantly captures the novel's 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.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    768 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  4. Publication date
    August 31, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    7.76 x 5.08 x 1.83 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    014044792X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0140447927
  8. Lexile measure
    1040L
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A book that manages like no other to plunge fearlessly into suffering while at the same time illuminating the enduring, almost unspeakable beauty of the human.” —Laurie Sheck, The Atlantic
 
“One of the most excoriating, compelling, and remarkable books ever written: and without question one of the greatest.” —A. C. Grayling
 
“A masterpiece . . . a fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils. . . . [an] excellent new translation.” —The Guardian
 
“McDuff's language is rich and alive.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[The Idiot's] narrative is so compelling.” —Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

About the Author

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer whose novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov rank among the greatest of the nineteenth century.
 
David McDuff (translator) has translated many works of nineteenth-century Russian literature, including works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Leskov for Penguin Classics.
 
William Mills Todd III (introducer) is a professor of Slavic languages at Harvard.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; New Ed edition (August 31, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 768 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014044792X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140447927
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1040L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.17 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.76 x 5.08 x 1.83 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,952 ratings

About the author

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (/ˌdɒstəˈjɛfski, ˌdʌs-/; Russian: Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский; IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ dəstɐˈjɛfskʲɪj]; 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. Many of his works are marked by a preoccupation with Christianity, explored through the prism of the individual confronted with life's hardships and beauty.

He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.

Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837, when he was 15, and around the same time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles.

In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Dostoyevsky influenced a multitude of writers and philosophers, from Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway to Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Top reviews from the United States

Kecim
5.0 out of 5 stars A. Good classic story and author
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2024
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Sorrie well written
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yoey
5.0 out of 5 stars Great story
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2024
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If you like Russian fiction, check this one out.
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Horus
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2023
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This is a good, but weird story. It keeps you interested. The Russian people depicted in the story are kind of super emotional, more so than most humans that I know that are not mentally ill. I guess I would say this story is about mental illness, but not in a way the reader will initially find.
3 people found this helpful
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Abi
5.0 out of 5 stars Great!
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2024
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Great!
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Gordon Hilgers
5.0 out of 5 stars Could Not Put It Down
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2023
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Wow. I had approached The Idiot with a little trepidation, mainly because I'd tried to read the novel when I was much younger. This time around, as a sort of "advanced reader", for me the novel's fast pace and continual ambushes of scenes thrilled me. I think I read the book in a week or less.

Of course, as a philosophical novel, one that deals with many social, political, cultural, and legal changes within 19th Century Russia, Dostoyevsky's frame of reference here is both iconoclastic and on-target. For long, particularly literate Russians, all steeped in Russian Christian Orthodoxy, suspected the West, and the incursion of all kinds of unexpected value and moral systems, most of them stemming from the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. Hence, ideas like utilitarianism, pragmatism, and materialism were seen by some as almost offensive to the Russian spirit. Dostoyevsky, who saw his Christianity, to put it into today's vernacular, as "on a whole 'nother level", and it definitely clashed with materialism, egoism, vanity, and the like. In fact, in some ways, Dostoyevsky was an early observer of the spiritual crisis for Christianity to come. Here in America, well, we're there now. Prosperity gospel, as one example, never could have been possible in a society not so besotten by materialism and gain.

Then there are the distortions that occur to, in the Dostoyevskian sense, a truly and almost saintly man, Prince Myshkin. He's a little like today's American intellectual: seen as an eccentric, as useless, as "not with the program, Myshkin cannot help to be bruised and sometimes even brutalized by the corrupt, vain, and prideful clan of people who have surrounded him.

I am particularly impressed by the translator's success in capturing Dostoyevsky's legendary rapid-fire style. I'd highly recommend this translation to anyone who wants to peruse a world of both doubles and of duplicity.
11 people found this helpful
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TWG
3.0 out of 5 stars Groan
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2016
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I bought this to revisit Dostoyevsky's exploration of the epileptic phenom, the loss of certain blocks of neuro-mind or whatever (after encountering some version myself), the dysfunction showing as naivety, innocence. My first thought this time was that D would have been totally dumbfounded by word processor vs quill, with lugubrious diversions spiralling off from each falter of thought to close it out rather than back up and strike through. Oh what a trial of patience. And oh those Russian names, the Prince, Lev Nicholayev, Mishkin, and spelling variants which may or may not be editor typos all being just some of the names for the titular idiot himself. The Russians of that time preferred to speak French, of course, but that did not help the rubble waste of names. In the third book the idiot has a fit-ramble off into hyper nationalist orthodox religion; I have not followed up to see whether critics put this down to D's own rabid melancholic nationalism, or it is thought intended to take a saintly edge off the idiot and relate him to D's Devils, etc. This book is a trial, an effort with dubious rewards. And a bad translation: too many sentences where one stops to reconstruct a piece of clumsiness before moving on, wondering if they were faithfully rendering a piece of D klutziness or taking time out to walk the dog. Constance Garnett is still preferable in the other D books.
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James Ferguson
5.0 out of 5 stars The Poor Knight
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2010
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Dostoevsky takes the reader on a wild ride as Prince Myshkin, a.k.a. the Idiot, returns to Russia after years of treatment in Switzerland to cure his "falling sickness." This has to be Dostoevsky's most personal novel as in Myshkin we see his own battles with epilepsy portrayed and even a reference to the fake execution he had to suffer before being deported to Siberia as a young man. But, Myshkin is not simply a projection of himself, but rather one half of a complex "Double" with Rogozhin who personifies the lurking dark side of this novel.

Like "The Double," written two decades before, Dostoevsky deals in dualities, but here the dualities are many fold and quite complex, so this may indeed not serve as one's best introduction to him. Not only do we see Myshkin forced to battle Rogozhin, ostensibly for the soul of Nastasya Fillipnova, but Myshkin finds himself torn between Nastya and Aglaya, who themselves appear to represent two sides of the same coin, which Myshkin simply can't bring himself to choose one over the other.

We also see a split social life, as personified by the aristocratic Epanchins played off a Petit-bourgeois in an odd assortment of characters that circle around Myshkin now that he has inherited a modest estate. This group seems to be led by the two-faced Lebedev who rents a room to the Prince in a summer village outside Petersburg where most of the action takes place. This middling class seems largely made up of outcast, which the Prince finds himself involved with, much to the chagrin of the Epanchins who would like to bring this distant relation into their fold, especially when he develops a strong yearning for their youngest daughter, Aglaya.

But, rather than play this out like a Russian soap opera, Dostoevsky delves into the psychological profiles of his characters, often with comic effect, but ultimately with tragic lessons to be learned. Aglaya refers to the Prince as the "Poor Knight," in reference to Don Quixote, and indeed the Prince seems an amusingly tormented figure unable to reconcile the two worlds he finds himself a part of. The Prince appears to identify with an earlier Russia, one steeped deeply in old Orthodox faith, as represented by General Ivolgin, who has since become reduced by drink to that of a fallen patriarch, spinning tales of the old days with the Prince being one of the few persons who will listen to him.

The cast of characters are broad and each takes on a life of his or her own within the novel, thanks in large part to this wonderful translation. Dostoevsky gives his characters space, as a theater director would, to make themselves heard and felt. In this sense, it is perhaps Dostoevsky's richest novel, certainly his most emotionally fulfilling, as it is less about Dostoevsky's views on religion, the state of Russia or corporal punishment as it is his sense of redemption and how each of his characters struggle to find it within his or her soul, particularly that of his central figure, Prince Myshkin.
31 people found this helpful
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Siljkovic
5.0 out of 5 stars Ist super
Reviewed in Germany on December 26, 2023
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Ist super
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Bitmag
5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable classic
Reviewed in India on November 22, 2023
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Those who have not read Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot have missed one of the best novels of all time. Prince Mishkiv’s character has been crafted brilliantly. A must read for all lovers of literature
3 people found this helpful
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Geoff Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Quick tip for any readers
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2023
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If you struggle keeping track with the Russian names, look up online for a spoiler free character list (although it may still contain small spoilers!). Print it off and use it as a reference when you get lost.
7 people found this helpful
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Gunnar Hellmund
2.0 out of 5 stars Pésima Edición
Reviewed in Mexico on July 15, 2020
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La letra es muy chiquita, los renglones son muy largos, y está escrito muy cerca de donde el libro se abre, lo que dificulta muchísimo y hace incómoda la lectura.
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Gunnar Hellmund
2.0 out of 5 stars Pésima Edición
Reviewed in Mexico on July 15, 2020
La letra es muy chiquita, los renglones son muy largos, y está escrito muy cerca de donde el libro se abre, lo que dificulta muchísimo y hace incómoda la lectura.
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One person found this helpful
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Ceska
5.0 out of 5 stars Great
Reviewed in Italy on May 8, 2019
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Exactly as expected.
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