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Summary: For Development, for power.
Review: "Through the idiot, the endearing, translucent, Christ-like figure of Prince Myshkin, Dostoyevsky's other characters, and readers as well, experience moments of total insight." For all those who look forward to learn the ways of geniuses, only to eventually become them, and no, there is neither a writer nor any other book that is analogous to this one. Such a unique experience deserves attention, and devotion.
Rating: 
Summary: A Tough One
Review: Dostoevsky's depection of the "positively good man" is much more fascinating, philosophically, than Crime and Punishment, but is also significantly harder to read. I suggest C&P instead, or the Brothers Karamazov if you have the time.
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Summary: Stunning Insights and Perfect Scenes
Review: Though this novel may not be as technically clear as /Crime and Punishment/ or /The Gambler/, it is an read indispensable for the true Dostoyevsky fan. More similar in style to Tolstoy, it employs a much greater sweep of characters and time than earlier novels.Some of the characters are absolutely fantastic, such as the Prince Myshkin himself, Roghozin, Ganya Ardalionovich, and Natassya Philopovna, and others are just a little bit too far over the top for my tastes, such as the old General and the mother of the three daughters (whose name escapes me). The Prince can be read both as a golden example of what an ideal person (a true Christian) should behave like, and an ironic comment on the superficiality and decadence of our society and the utter infeasability of the life of such a sacrificial lamb. Perhaps his undoing is his intelligence, if he wasn't so smart, he really would be an Idiot, but as it is, he is both too trusting and too discerning at the same time. Some of the scenes are magnificent, such as Hippolite's monologue, and the final tableau....I won't spoil them, but I must say that even if the entire book wasn't so good, it would still be worth reading to just imagine these scenes. This book, much more than /Crime and Punishment/, serves as a vehicle for Dostoyevsky to deliver his own views on nihilism, the death sentence, and various and sundry other topics. While interesting, he doesn't always manage to make them flow well into the story. For any fans of existentialism, this is a must read, as Albert Camus practically lifted many of his ideas for The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus from several sections of this work.
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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.
Rating:
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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