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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.733
EAN: 9780375702242
ISBN: 0375702245
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 656
Publication Date: July 08, 2003
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: July 08, 2003
Studio: Vintage
Features:- ISBN13: 9780375702242
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
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.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Everything I've ever read by Dostoevsky has been great and this is no exception. I believe Dostoevsky is the greatest writer that ever lived. The characters are so vivid and alive and there is so much excitement and tension in his stories that it just amazes me. As in all his books, he toys with powerful philosophical ideas and weaves them into the plot and characters. And I really like these translations. I feel like the translators really understood the power in the writer.
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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 seem 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 cast outs, 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.
Rating: -
I read this novel about 30 years ago, and I loved it. I don't remember much now about too many of the characters except, of course, Prince Myshkin, one of the most fascinating characters in all of literature. He certainly was a Christ-like figure as many of the reviewers have stated, but I thought he was quite funny also. In fact, my impression was that the novel was simply a crackling good read--very entertaining story and in many ways a comic masterpiece. We should remember that Dostoevsky wrote his novels for the general public, to be read serially in popular periodicals in the 1880s, so they were geared to be enjoyed by the typical Russian reader and indeed they were. He was trying to earn a living so he had to be a good storyteller.
There's something else about this story that I don't think anybody else has touched on. When I was watching the movie "Being There" with Peter Sellers and the movie "Forrest Gump" with Tom Hanks I kept thinking of this novel. All three narratives are basically the same story, aren't they? Remember the last scene in "Being There" when the child-like Peter Sellers character (Chance Gardner) is seemingly walking on water evoking christ-like imagery? And the Gump character--geez, if he doesn't remind you of the prince, nobody in popular fiction or cinema does. I'm sure the makers of these two movies were inspired by the same basic story written over 100 years ago by the great FD.
Rating:  -
I won't go into great detail about the book since you can read the summary. I will only provide this: I rate "The Idiot" four stars only, ONLY, because I compare it to other works by Dostoevsky. I classify his four-star work as being: "Crime and Punishment", "The Idiot" and "House of the Dead". "The Brothers Karamazov" being his 5-star work. IMO.
That being said, I read this book last summer and enjoyed it tremendously. I read Dostoevsky very, very slowly on purpose. I enjoy each sentence, each paragraph and each page like a delicious Scotch. I don't want to finish his books because the characters are so rich. To me, his only competition is Turgenev, and (the greatest work I've yet to read) Joyce's "Ulysses".
I try and imagine someone sculping such beautiful sentences without the use of a word processor to pour over them, arrange and rearrange them. If you're just getting into Dostoevsky , this is a good a place as any to start.
Also, stick to the translations by Pevear and Volokhonsky. Their language is much better than some of the older Penguin versions you're going to find.
I plan on rereading this book again soon.
cheers!
Rating: -
As many others have noted below. the Idiot is one of the enduring works of literature from one of the greatest novelists in history. It is packed with ideas , wonderfully realized characters and dialogue and is undoubtedly worth the effort required to read on through some of the slower set pieces that Dostoevsky frequently employs. I personally found Crime and Punishment and the story of Razkolnikov's struggle with guilt far more compelling than Prince Myshkin's purity and innocence in the Idiot. Both novels are rewarding but if I were to recommend only one to someone looking to read Dostoevsky for the first time I would choose C and P.
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