When Dostoevsky died in 1881, he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.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. But it was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-69), The Possessed (1871-72), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. Petersburg only a full ten years after he had left in chains. He then spent four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to suffer from epilepsy, and he returned to St. Dressed in a death shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited execution, when suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence.
In prison he was given the "silent treatment" for eight months (guards even wore velvet soled boots) before he was led in front a firing squad. A short first novel, Poor Folk (1846) brought him instant success, but his writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. About the Author: Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky's life was as dark and dramatic as the great novels he wrote. From award-winning translators, a masterful new translation-never before published-of the novel in which Fyodor Dostoevsky set out to portray a truly beautiful soul. The Idiot is both a powerful indictment of that society and a rich and gripping masterpiece.
Extortion and scandal escalate to murder, as Dostoevsky's "positively beautiful man" clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his innocence and moral idealism. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest.
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