The Idiot By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Beauty will save the world.”

A prince too pure for the world he enters.
A love too tragic to survive.
A novel too powerful to forget.

Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Dostoyevsky set out to create a protagonist with "a truly beautiful soul" and to trace the fate of such an individual as he comes into contact with the brutal reality of contemporary society. The novel begins when the innocent epileptic Prince Myshkin - the 'idiot' - arrives in St Petersburg and finds himself drawn into a web of violent and passionate relationships that leads to blackmail, betrayal and eventually murder.

A philosophical masterpiece, The Idiot challenges readers to consider what it means to be truly good in a world that rewards ambition, manipulation, and wealth. Ideal for lovers of Russian literature, existential themes, and character-driven narratives.

About the author:

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His debut, the epistolary novella Poor Folk (1846), made his name. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with the politically subversive 'Petrashevsky circle' and until 1854 he lived in a convict prison in Omsk, Siberia. From this experience came The House of the Dead (1860-2). In 1860 he began the journal Vremya (Time). Already married, he fell in love with one of his contributors, Appollinaria Suslova, eighteen years his junior, and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. After the death of his first wife, Maria, in 1864, Dostoyevsky completed Notes from Underground and began work towards Crime and Punishment (1866). The major novels of his late period are The Idiot (1868), Demons (1871-2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He died in 1881.

David McDuff (Translator)
David McDuff's translations for Penguin Classics include Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot, and Babel's short stories.