How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Excellent
Advantages:
A great Novel
Disadvantages:
It is not short
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
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 lifestyle that they value so highly. The Prince is, in fact, showing them that there is another way to live life: a way that is based on love and compassion rather than social manovering.
This is a very moving and 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 sheer quality of Dostoyevsky's writing.
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