Samule Leuenberger Books

The Idiot Dostoevskys Idiot, is one of the most famous novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky. After a five-year stay in a Swiss sanatorium, 26-year-old Prince Lev Myshkin returns to Russia one November morning to settle an inheritance matter in St. Petersburg following the death of a relative. Although his epilepsy has been successfully treated, his isolation has caused him to develop childishly naive behaviors and he is ridiculed by society as an "Idiot." The Idiot is rightly considered one of the greatest works of world literature. In his naive, unconventional way, the protagonist sees people in their personal and social tensions and contradictions and their resulting suffering. He fails in his efforts to help them and sinks back into his disease state of mental isolation. Dostoevksi the Idiot is a must for everyone's bookcase. A "Kultverlag Klassik" novel.

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.