The Idiot

by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor; McDuff, David; Mills Todd, William

• ISBN13: 9780140447927
• ISBN10: 014044792X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-31
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive Prince Myshikin - known as 'the idiot' - pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal and, finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, Dosteyevsky set out to portray the purity of 'a truly beautiful soul' and to explore the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.

Author Biography

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-û1881), one of nineteenth- century Russia-'s greatest novelists, spent four years in a convict prison in Siberia, after which he was obliged to enlist in the army. In later years his penchant for gambling sent him deeply into debt.

David McDuff has translated many works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky-'s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

William Mills Todd III is a professor of Slavic languages at Harvard.

Table of Contents

Chronology	p. vii
Introduction	p. xi
Further Reading	p. xxxv
A Note on the Translation	p. xxxviii
The Idiot	p. 1
Notes	p. 719
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