Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin— known as the “idiot”—pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, Dostoyevsky portrays the purity of “a truly beautiful soul” and explores the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.
The Idiot (Readings Classics)
₨ 750
Prince Lev Myshkin is a kind and compassionate man whose sincerity and honesty has set him apart in a world driven by ambition, greed and deception. Returning to Russia after treatment for epilepsy in Switzerland, he meets two women-Nastasya Filippovna, a beautiful, self-destructive woman haunted by her past and Aglaya Epanchin, a spirited and idealistic young aristocrat. Caught between them, he becomes entangled in a web of love, jealousy and manipulation. As tensions mount and passions erupt, his goodness begins to clash fatally with the corruption around him.Drawn deeper into the lives of those who both revere and exploit him, he faces an impossible choice that can destroy everything-and everyone-he cares for. Through Myshkin’s tragic journey, Dostoyevsky examines the tension between goodness and societal corruption, questioning whether true purity can survive in a world full of moral ambiguity. With its richly drawn characters, psychological depth and philosophical insight, The Idiot stands as one of Dostoyevsky’s most moving and thought-provoking works, offering a timeless meditation on what it means to live with compassion in an often unforgiving world.
