The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Advantages: Dostoevsky at his best - for just £1.50
Disadvantages: It is long - but in a good way

...short stories and this was the first of the "big" novels that I picked up. Dostoevsky held strong beliefs and whilst he supported Monarchy per se, he did not agree with serfdom and censorship. Under the tyrannical reign of Nikolay I, Dostoevsky and other members of the intellectual Petrashevsky group (Utopian Socialists) were sentenced to death for their opposition to his rule. A last minute reprieve forced Dostoevsky to serve four years hard labour ...
...back on a career in the civil service in order to pursue his writing talents. The Idiot, published in 1868, after his best known pieces Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment. The story follows Prince Myshkin who is the idiot of the title. Myshkin is naive and basically honest, and represents Dostoevsky's ideas of the ideal Christian - some would even say Myshkin is representative of Christ. Having been released from a mental asylum ... Read review

Advantages: A great Novel
Disadvantages: It is not short

The Idiot is a difficult novel to pin down. The central character, Prince Leo Myshkin, is a Christ-like figure who returns to Russia after having spent many years in Switzerland being treated for epilepsy. He finds himself attached to a typical bourgeois social circle based around the city of Petersburg, whose members look on him with a mixture of curiosity and pity because of his seeming naivety and unwillingness to accept at face value the superficial ...
...profound novel that captures absolutely the doomed search for spiritual certainty in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. This reflects the author’s own struggle with his Christianity. Portends of the turmoil to come are also present in characters such as the dying nihilist Ippolit. The Idiot is one of the greatest of all the Russian psychological novels. I would also recomend it to those who are new to this kind of writing because of the ... Read review

Advantages: Involving, romantic, moving, passionate
Disadvantages: Russian references may be lost on the modern reader

...Dostoyevsky's most engaging book, and the most accessable to the reader unfamiliar with his work. Its basically about a bloke that has led a very sheltered life due to illness, who arrives on a train into this world of Russian society as a naive (the back of the book says Christ-like, but I think Dostoyevsky-like is more accurate!) and untainted soul, falls in love (unrequited) with a dodgy woman who loves someone else and mixes with the high thinking ...
...all the usual Dostoyevskyesque stuff about redemption and communism and faith, but I get a bit fed up of analysing ever paragraph for layers and meaning, just read it and enjoy the excellent style, the passionate plot and the totally involving main character Prince Myshkin (I think, its been a few months since I read this!). I read a lot of rubbish, but this really moved me, and I got completely into the emotions and longings of the Prince, his altruistic ... Read review