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The Idiot

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Idiot

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

0 - Default Title
Description
Dostoyevsky's great novel of suffering and sickness, innocence and greed, now in Penguin Clothbound Classics Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin - the titular '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. Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Dostoyevsky sought to portray in Prince Myshkin the purity of a 'truly beautiful soul' and explore 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. If you enjoyed The Idiot, you might like Anton Chekhov's Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics. 'McDuff's language is rich and alive' The New York Times Book Review '[The Idiot's] ... narrative is so compelling' Rowan Williams
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
784
Release Date:
2025-12-02
Publication Date:
2025-09-11
Publisher:
Penguin Books Ltd (UK)
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0241739829
ISBN13:
9780241739822
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
884 g
Height:
140 cm
Width:
199 cm
Thickness:
47 cm
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