The Idiot Paperback – October 10, 2016

The “Idiot” is a great book, and if you’re looking for a really well developed story of just regular Russians trying to figure things out, in a sense this is your book.

Dostoyevsky must have been one messed up dude. The Idiot, poor Myshkin, ends up in a rubber room, Aglaia runs off with a Polish count - oops did I say count? No account count! And Nastasya ends up dead. Yikes! And I just started Crime and Punishment. All this would have taken place a generation of two before Lenin and Stalin - and you know what fun guys they were!

Still a classic after all these years but dreadfully long and you need a small notepad to keep all the characters straight.

Only an idiot thinks they can write better than Mr. D. Classic.

I bought this book because I was halfway through the book and I lost it on travel. The book arrived in the time it was promised and the quality was also as described. This is a great classic by Dosteovsky.

very good

Two stars is for the fact that the reader switches during the book, not for the quality of the writing.The book, of course, is a classic. It's interesting, it's thought provoking, and all those good things. However, when it's an audio book, the voice has to be pleasant, and one the listener can enjoy. I was enjoying the male reader that I had chosen but suddenly it switched to a female voice that was whiny, and I can't even tell what sort of accent she is hoping for but it's not Russian. It's not British either, in any case, it's awful to listen to. I enjoyed 29 chapters and I have 22 more chapters to go but I've decided to READ the book if I can't figure out how to change the voice.

What a superb work that is wasted on the young...in spirit not age. I highly recommend one take the time to reacquaint Dostoyevski.

Mind blowing and very informative.Quite deep and makes you think about different types of people born in certain classes. How inhuman they can become through life experiences nobody wants to be looked down on or be seen as common. They think that having a good education makes them better or cleverer than others. Ignorant is bliss.

As always anything by Dostoyevsky is brilliant. Gripping story.

Good

I read the Constance Garnett translation of “The Idiot” in a Dover Thrift Edition. The last words of the novel as she translated are:“We’ve had enough of following our whims; it is time to be reasonable. And all of this, all this life abroad’ and this Europe of yours us all a fantasy, and all of us abroad are only a fantasy … remember my words’ you’ll see it for yourself!” she concluded almost wrathfully as she parted from Yevegny Pavlovitch.These were Lizveta Prokofyevna’s words to express her longing to get back to Russia from the foreign trip that her family undertook in the aftermath of Myshkin’s breakdown. When I first read these, I was puzzled. Why had Dostoyevsky chosen them and the ideas they expressed to end his novel. I had read that the novel was the story of a Christ-like man whose almost holy innocence affected those he encountered. What had these words that expressed a rejection of Europe for a life in Russia to do with that. It came to me then that Myshkin was a Christ-like figure but as he expressed in his rant at the Epanchin’s party, there was a Christ that was specific to Russia and that Christ was opposed to the false Christ expressed in Europe and particularly the Roman Catholic Christ.“The Idiot” is a political novel in that it is a novel that is a about the redemptive power of Russian culture. In eh novel, it is a culture based an traditions and religion that are being threatened those who fall way from it into a life of passion and to those who are attracted to modernity in the form of nihilism and European culture. Various characters within the novel personify these. In particular, the two women in Myshkin’s life personify the attraction of passion (Natysha) and European modernity (Aglaia). Both reject and run away from him and in the end, both are destroyed for this rejection.I don’t know if this interpretation of “The Idiot” as an assertion of the validity and superiority of a Russian culture that is felt to be under threat is one that will be seen as valid by scholars. I’m reading this as a layman to try gain enough knowledge to not feel entirely at sea when hearing discussions of literature on the radio and elsewhere. I saw a similar political aspect in “The Brothers Karamazov” and the question occurs to me if Dostoyevsky is seen as a political novelist. He did ask a rather political question in “Crime and Punishment”. Why is the killer of two people considered to be a vile criminal when while political leaders such as Napoleon who have caused the death of millions are considered to be heroes? I put this view out to see if anyone finds it interesting. Perhaps a scholar glancing at these words will find the idea od a political Dostoyevsky entirely unsupported or maybe so tired and obvious as to be trite. I’m reading in retirement the books that I was supposed to have read as a student but didn’t. Maybe now I’ll be able to learn what I know I should have and have felt missing from my life

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