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Summary: Dostoyevsky's Best!
Review: In my opinion Dostoyevsky's finest novel. Reveals the depths of human compassion and tenderness, unrequited love, and unfulfilled hopes and dreams - such things that can only be accompanied by craziness.
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Summary: I love this book.
Review: The idiot is a really good book about a prince who is quite foolish, but frank and sincere and naive and wonderful. Dostoyevsky displays a multitude of human natures in this novel. Conceited, simple, self hating and a bunch of other characters. I like to read but i'm afraid i can't write very well so i can't relay the greatness of this book. if you take 3 words out of this reveiw, let it be "read this book." um.... enjoy!
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Summary: Best translation of a simply great book
Review: No point in my laboring here. Having read several translations of this masterpiece, and David Magarshack's effort at least a half dozen times, the Penguin Classics is my favorite. As for the novel, well it simply annihilates the attentive reader. The most wrenching treatment of love, hate, passion to the point of self destruction, this is a terribly funny book in parts, and Magarshack captures the humor beautifully. Torrential conversations, several beautiful women, and the greatest birthday party ever committed to print, there is also a murder(of course, it's Dostoyevsky!). Hallucinogenic passages alternate with passages of great wit, generosity and unbearable truths about being human. This book is a monster and will change your life. My Old and New Testaments, in one volume, at a great price. Get it and believe!!
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Summary: The beautiful tragedy of goodness
Review: First of all, I wonder who's bright idea it was to put such a absurd cover painting on The Idiot! Oh, i'm sure it has a very very intellectual meaning, but it reflects absolutely nohting about the novel itself. I'm sure Dostoevsky would turn crazy if he saw his novel with this cover picture. Rest assured, you wont find anything of this sort in the novel. Prince Myshkin (the idiot) is a naive and good-hearted man, (and also a very sweet and charming man). He has just returned from Europe, where he has been isolated from the world for a period to undergo a surgery. His isolation and his epileptic falls has in his own words "turned him into being an idiot". His problem is that he lacks a mighty ego, and something material to hold onto in life. In other words, things that makes a man a man today. And interestingly, he don't seem to be in any need for such things. So his story is bound to be tragic and problematic. Still, as the novel deepens it becomes obvious that Myshkin's 'problem' is not that he's an "idiot" actually, but that he observes things around him with very different eyes. More sincere and humane eyes. He's an idiot in the eye of Holywood heroism. His behaviour is "idiocy" in the eyes of modernism with its own "unique" value-structure (money, fame, power, etc.). He conveys a childness that people around him can, at best, pity. Myshkin is the true "good man", partly Don Quixote, partly Jeal Valjan, partly Dostoevsky. Not a lifeless body!
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Summary: A classic battle between the heart and the head
Review: The Idiot is a great novel that could take a lifetime to fully explore. It embodies Dostoievsky's struggle to find humanity and "heart" in people in the face of our "civilized" rationalism. The characters in this novel could come from modern characters in our own lives. We all sacrifice to some degree our hearts in favour of our heads. Prince Myshkin's passion for life, truth, and love are a positive example to us all. The only complaint I have about this book is the title. Does this word (Idiot) have a subtley different meaning in Russian? It does not do justice to anybody's interpretation of Myshkin . I believe that anybody who has read this book , like anyone who comes in contact with a person like Myshkin, will be better for it.
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Summary: Dostoevsky, the great Russian social commentator
Review: Having read "Crime and Punishment" fifteen years ago, I was prepared for Dostoevsky's commentary on the social and materialistic qualities of the Russian middle class of the 19th Century. "The Idiot" has a slower pace but a surprise ending which makes reading it well worth the effort. The novel begins with three strangers in a train en route to Petersburg. A young man named Prince Myshkin is returning from a Swiss sanatorium where he has been treated for the past few years for some malady similar to epilepsy. He meets a roguish young man named Rogozhin, who has an unhealthy obsession with a beautiful young woman named Nastasya Filippovna, and a nosy government official named Lebedyev, who figures prominently throughout the novel. Upon arriving in Petersburg, Myshkin acquaints himself with many of the citizens and eventually meets, and is infatuated by, Nastasya. She is pushy, fickle, and impetuous, and bounces from fiance to fiance like a fortune hunter. Her irresistibility and psychological stronghold on the men in her life leads to her downfall. The basis of the novel is that Myshkin is not bright, has not had much education, and traverses society with a mentality of simplistic innocence. When speaking his opinion, he struggles to articulate himself with Charlie Brown-like stammering and wishy-washiness. For this reason, people consider him an idiot, but he is a good, honest, sympathetic, and gracious person. When he comes into a large inheritance, he is blackmailed by a man who claims to be the illegitimate son of Myshkin's benefactor; but when the man's story is debunked, Myshkin befriends rather than chastises the culprit and his accomplices. Myshkin also falls in love with and becomes betrothed to a giddy girl named Aglaia, who uses his ingenuousness as a foil for her jokes and sarcasm, despite his undying devotion to her. The novel seems to say that a saintly man, making his way in a society that is concerned with materialism and cutthroat avarice, will be considered a childish idiot for valuing honesty, kindness, and the simple things in life. Like I said, the ending is a shocker and sends a plaintive message, that in a crazy world, a sanatorium is the only place for a saint.
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Summary: one of the best and most affecting books in the history.
Review: dostoyvsky is clearly, the most powerful and the most challenging novelist in the history. he sweeps the language and metaphor into a dangerous realm. readers could go insane reading this book, its so terrifyingly involving. myshkin is argued as jesus himself, with his lamblike innocence and the arrogance that comes with it. well, i found so mnay layers and so many meanings in the narrative, that i think only a great text could produce such range of emotions and thoughts. the text argues, fights, weeps, sulks, dreams and goes mad with you.
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Summary: Dostoevsky at his best
Review: Dostoevsky is brilliant in this fascinating portrayal of an innocent thrust into the modern world. As always, he creates characters so realistic and multi-faceted that they transform into living, breathing, pitiable, three-dimensional people - as real as your own family, by the novel's end. One particularly fascinating passage describes a man's thoughts and emotions as he endures the final minutes before his own impending execution, until his life is suddenly spared at the last moment. Dostoevsky himself narrowly escaped execution in his youth, having been granted a last-minute reprieve. This passage not only sheds new light on his experience, but manages to make the death penalty forever more real for us all. Dostoevsky's insights into what motivates humans to behave as they do, including the insane, the hopelessly in love, the greedy, and the pure in heart, is heart-breaking in its accuracy. A good read that will keep you thinking about it for days and weeks after its conclusion.
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Summary: a masterpiece revealing our imperfect world all too nakedly
Review: Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" is a compelling mixture of extremely well-drawn characterizations as well as an adept representation of the author's persistently over-arching world view concerning the "perennial questions" of human existence. The novel's main subject, Prince Myshkin, is a sublime and unforgettable character. I certainly wouldn't dispute Myshkin's centrality in "The Idiot" but here Dostoevsky has fleshed out many more distinctive personalities ( Aglaya, Rogozhin, Lebedev, Ippolit ) than ( if my memory serves me correctly ) in his "Crime and Punishment" ( another masterwork ), which focused pretty much on Raskolnikov's decaying interior world ( an extension of his "underground man" from the famous "Notes" of 1864 ). To speak of the plot would be irresponsible ( I do recommend reading the main text PRIOR to reading the scholarly introduction by the translator ) but you can be assured that if you have enjoyed the novels of Thomas Mann ( "Magic Mountain" in particular ), Joseph Conrad or Nikos Kazantzakis, you will appreciate "The Idiot". Also, it seems fairly obvious that a person who has already read several of Dostoevsky's other works will be interested in this particular novel. I admit that at first, not having read a 19th century novel for quite a while ( in fact, since "Crime & Punishment" about 10 years ago ), I had to get used to the "salon culture" ( for want of a better term ) and the ( seemingly ) melodramatic exchanges between the characters in their frequent soirees, which appeared, initially, to be somewhat strained. However, it was instructive for me to meditate on the fact that this was an era ( c.1868 ) without the "benefit" ( ?!? ) of our advanced technological distractions ( radio, television, internet ) and so, if one was NOT to participate in such gatherings, one would be resigned to a life of solitude ( with a capital "S" ). Therefore, such "melodramatic" exchanges seemed less unrealistic than at first I thought. And, as an aside, Dostoevsky was in his early adulthood a frequenter of all sorts of literary gatherings ( this aspect of his life is superbly revealed in Joseph Frank's multi-volume biography ). Undoubtedly he drew upon his memories of such social circles when writing "The Idiot". In any case, whether it was by bearing these historical points in mind or by naturally adjusting to the author's emotional landscape, I did eventually adjust and felt the dialogue to transform into a compellingly realistic vision, at turns exhilarating and sorrowful ( inevitably, the latter mood prevails ). My choice of translation was the Alan Myers/OXFORD PRESS version. I noticed that the PENGUIN translation was about 60-70 pages shorter. I didn't find that either mentioned "abridged" ( or "unabridged" ) but ended up basing my purchase on the OXFORD's ( apparently ) longer version. Also, the Myers/OXFORD version has a black and white map of St Petersburg and some helpful notes explaining various obscure references. However, having read the novel only once, I'm obviously not in the position to call this version definitive. I imagine the old Constance Garnett translation has some merit ( she's been in print for some 70 years now and that must say something of her abilities ) and perhaps the acclaimed team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volakhonsky, who've already translated "C&P", "Demons", "Karamazov" as well as "Notes from the Underground", will be tackling "The Idiot" in the near future.
Rating: 
Summary: Stupid
Review: I hated this book. Whoever enjoyed needs a life. Read the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is a fantasy God!!
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