Rating: 
Summary: Profound, Timeless Relevance
Review: The Idiot is often unfairly compared to Dostoyevsky's other masterpieces and, even though The Idiot usually comes out on the short end of any comparison, it is certainly my favorite. Although the narrative of The Idiot may ramble more than do some of Dostoyevsky's other books, I feel it is ultimately more profound.At its core, The Idiot is a character/society study although it also encompasses many religious and political aspects as well. The central character, Prince Myshkin, provides the contrast for all the other characters and is definitely a "Christ-like" figure, a man who embodies most perfectly the Christian ideals of selflessness and love. Prince Myshkin is a man who has suffered from mental illness since childhood. This illness has the curious effect of causing him to respond from his heart rather than from his head. In addition, Myshkin also suffers from a form of epilepsy that causes him to launch into tirades regarding the social ills of the day. As a Christ-like figure, Myshkin is in direct contrast to the other characters in the book who are all worldly and sophisticated, though somewhat cynical, aristocrats. Myshkin's extreme goodness also causes him to become entangled in various political and personal intrigues. Although completely good, Prince Myshkin in a fully realized character. One of the marvels of this novel is that Dostoyevsky managed to present Myshkin as a serious, rather than a comic, character. His goodness is not something we want to laugh at. There are many comic moments in the book, however, and most of them are provided through various financial and romantic entanglements. Although Prince Myshkin is the thread that links all the characters and aspects in the novel, he is not the only fully realized character; the others are also extremely well drawn. Dostoyevsky was fond of using real life incidents in his books and his notes tells us this is something he did in creating the characters that populate this book. Ultimately, The Idiot is a tragic book. Politically, it ridicules the shallow ideals of the Russian aristocracy, and, while Prince Myshkin's ramblings may seem comic, they are actually harsh criticism. Prince Myshkin was more than "a positively good man." He was a man who could see into the future and know what lay in store. Dostoyevsky's deep insight into the character of man makes The Idiot one of literature's most profound and timeless works.
Rating: 
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.
Rating:
Summary: A new genre for me
Review: This is the first Russia novel that I have read, and must say that it want be the last. What can I say about this good novel, that hasn't already been said. It's a shame that being real kind-hearted is sometime look on as being crazy, or strange. A great book, that I am glad that I took a chance on reading.
Rating:
Summary: A dark, tumultuous, complex work--one of D's greatest.
Review: Dostoevsky, that great tortured and feverish soul, wrote this novel after the onslaught of the Nihilists in Russian arts and letters. He felt he was waging a war against the crude and unfeeling Western materialism of the day; he was battling what he saw as a holy war. While authors like Turgenev and Tolstoy regarded the expanding West with (fairly) open arms, Dostoevsky feared it would cause a religious crisis, where faith in Christ was extinguished and ignorance, vanity, and greed would overcome. This is a towering, exciting novel--perhaps not as great as "Crime & Punishment" or "Brothers Karamazov"--it contains some of his most penetrating insights into religious faith, human compassion, despair, and insanity. Prince Myshkin is of course one of literature's great characters, a Christ-like young man caught up in the treachery of the aristocratic lives of the Yepanchins. The other two main characters, Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna, along with Myshkin, form a powerful triangle that, despite their being "off-stage" for much of the novel, drive this novel to its tragic, unavoidable climax. I do not, however, recommend this book to first time Dostoevsky readers; that should be "Notes from Underground" or "Crime and Punishment." The ideas Dostoevsky explores here need some context and understanding; they may leave the inexperienced reader a bit confused. At least that was my experience! After understanding him and his concerns, this novel cracked wide open. It is a darkly spiritual work, as are all of his; it is also quite disturbing. When young Ippolit describes the Hans Holbein painting "Christ in the Tomb" that adorns the cover of the Oxford edition, we see into the darkest reaches of despair and hopelessness. Indeed, the painting is a Christ that is unresurrected, one that is rotting flesh and cannot, in Dostoevsky's scenario, save humankind. This thought terrifies Rogozhin, Myshkin... and Dostoevsky himself. What a stunning achievement this work is. I am in awe of it. Simply: Read it.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: 4.75 Stars
Review: There certainly will never be another book like The Idiot. As every high school student knows, the central maxim of creative writing is, "Show; don't tell." Henry James, who criticized the novels of Dostoyevsky as big, lumbering dinosaurs, epitomized this method of literary exegesis. In The Idiot, Dostoyevsky wrote nearly 700 pages of "telling" and almost no "showing" to speak of. The book doesn't really have a plot: though linear, there is little cohesion; in addition, Dostoyevsky takes frequent times outs from telling his story to expound on such philosophical issues as capital punishment, morality, humility, materialism, and the order of chaos. Indeed, the previous subject, or the lack there of, is really the theme and the focus of the book. In reading The Idiot, it becomes quite clear why Christ was crucified. Dostoyevsky portrays the Russia of his time as a mad, chaotic world characterized by an obsession with decadent materialism. In such a swirling mass of "isms", one struggles to find a rational and coherent foothold; morality and virtue have no place. The Christian ideal -- which now seems to have disappeared from the world, if, indeed, it ever actually existed -- of humility, submission, deference, tolerance, and turning the other cheek, as personified in Prince Myshkin, the novel's title character and protagonist, also has no place. Dostoyevsky saw the Christ-like figure of Myshkin as the only hope that Russian culture and society had: he was Dostoyevsky's redemptive figure. Unfortunately, as Dostoyevsky clearly and vividly portrays in this dark and bleak novel, such a person would most likely never be able to integrate him or herself into a culture as far gone into decadence and negative modes of thinking -- atheism, nihilism, etc. -- as his Russia was. Does this sound familiar, or does it not? The book and it multiple messages are clearly still very relevant today. One literary scholar quite accurately called this Dostoyevsky's most contemporary novel. One senses that it is even more applicable to today's (post-Communist and once again being invaded by capitalism and Western materialism) Russia than to the Russia of Dostoyevsky's own time. The book is not an especially exciting read: there is a multitude of dialogue and very few things (with the exceptions of Nastashya's two big incidents) which can be called "exciting" take place. The novel, as mentioned before, is also very fragmented: it is seemingly not structured at all, and events happen apparently at random and with no connection to each other. This, of course, relates back to the chaos of order -- or, in relation to the novel itself, the order of chaos. The discontinuity of the novel reflects and comments upon the discontinuity of society and the world itself. This is precisely why we still read Dostoyevsky today, and why we should always read him: the anomie of Dostoyevsky is the eternal anomie of mankind.
Rating:
Summary: Flashes of brilliance, tedious at times
Review: This fascinating novel gives a portrait of the well-to-do upper class in 19th century Saint Petersburg. Like most his other work, after having set the initial setting, Dostoyevski peels off only a thin layer of civilization to reveal raw greed, insane jealousy and hysteria in most of the main characters. The book's 900 pages are divided in four parts, of which the first part is by far the most engaging. After having set the stage in this first part however, Dostoyevski seems unable to bring the many plotlines to a satisfactory conclusion. The plot gets complicated by the introduction of too many side characters, and the main players lose much of their colour. The book is definitely too long. After part one, the fascinating Nastassia Philippovna is degraded to an abstract background character. Also, prince Muichkine's naïveté is not as pure anymore. Although the book gets tedious at times, there are two flashes of brilliance which makes the latter parts a rewarding read. In part three, Hyppolite gives a captivating account of the motivations of a person who is condemned tot death by his tuberculosis. And in the first pages of part 4, Dostoyevski offers a merciless description of Gania, who combines a burning ambition, a glaring lack of ability and from there on the urge to always blame others for his lack of success. Very recognizable, the analysis still holds today.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite book by my favorite author!
Review: This is the novel where Dostoevsky's ability as an artist to create fascinating characters reach it's pinnacle. How can you read this novel and not love the Prince Myshkin, with his childlike innocence juxtaposed against his complete mastery into the inner psychologies of people, or not fall in love with Aglaia, the sensitive and mercurial soul that protects herself behind a wall of cynicism and pride? Dostoevsky somehow casts his spell, whereby the the reader is lead into another world populated with seemingly fantastic and insane characters, who nevertheless seem absolutely real. His uncanny insights into the depths of psychology are incredibly trenchant and almost super-human. Nietschze said of Dostoevsky that he is the only psychologist whom he ever learned anything from. So absolutely true! Who else wrote with such insight about people with self destructive tendencies(Natashya), subconscious desires, and the irrational contradictions of the conscious and subconscious. If you read this novel and do not come away with new insight and a better understanding of the psychological workings of others around you, either you are Freud come back from the dead or incredibly dense!
Rating:
Summary: 4.75 Stars
Review: There certainly will never be another book like The Idiot. As every high school student knows, the central maxim of creative writing is, "Show; don't tell." Henry James, who criticized the novels of Dostoyevsky as big, lumbering dinosaurs, epitomized this method of literary exegesis. In The Idiot, Dostoyevsky wrote nearly 700 pages of "telling" and almost no "showing" to speak of. The book doesn't really have a plot: though linear, there is little cohesion; in addition, Dostoyevsky takes frequent times outs from telling his story to expound on such philosophical issues as capital punishment, morality, humility, materialism, and the order of chaos. Indeed, the previous subject, or the lack there of, is really the theme and the focus of the book. In reading The Idiot, it becomes quite clear why Christ was crucified. Dostoyevsky portrays the Russia of his time as a mad, chaotic world characterized by an obsession with decadent materialism. In such a swirling mass of "isms", one struggles to find a rational and coherent foothold; morality and virtue have no place. The Christian ideal -- which now seems to have disappeared from the world, if, indeed, it ever actually existed -- of humility, submission, deference, tolerance, and turning the other cheek, as personified in Prince Myshkin, the novel's title character and protagonist, also has no place. Dostoyevsky saw the Christ-like figure of Myshkin as the only hope that Russian culture and society had: he was Dostoyevsky's redemptive figure. Unfortunately, as Dostoyevsky clearly and vividly portrays in this dark and bleak novel, such a person would most likely never be able to integrate him or herself into a culture as far gone into decadence and negative modes of thinking -- atheism, nihilism, etc. -- as his Russia was. Does this sound familiar, or does it not? The book and it multiple messages are clearly still very relevant today. One literary scholar quite accurately called this Dostoyevsky's most contemporary novel. One senses that it is even more applicable to today's (post-Communist and once again being invaded by capitalism and Western materialism) Russia than to the Russia of Dostoyevsky's own time. The book is not an especially exciting read: there is a multitude of dialogue and very few things (with the exceptions of Nastashya's two big incidents) which can be called "exciting" take place. The novel, as mentioned before, is also very fragmented: it is seemingly not structured at all, and events happen apparently at random and with no connection to each other. This, of course, relates back to the chaos of order -- or, in relation to the novel itself, the order of chaos. The discontinuity of the novel reflects and comments upon the discontinuity of society and the world itself. This is precisely why we still read Dostoyevsky today, and why we should always read him: the anomie of Dostoyevsky is the eternal anomie of mankind.
Rating:
Summary: Idiot
Review: My favorite Dostoyevsky novel. A childlike man that is somehow easier to empathise with than any of his other characters, perhaps. But you don't need my opinion on this novel. Just read it yourself and enjoy.
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