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The Idiot [Blackstone]

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About this listen

 Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life - abject poverty, incessant gambling, and the death of his firstborn child - Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, The Idiot, just two years after completing Crime and Punishment. In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."©2000 Blackstone Audiobooks. Originally published in 1880 in Russia. Classics Crime

Critic reviews

"Nothing is outside Dostoevsky's province.... Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading." ( Virginia Woolf)
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I enjoyed this book and found it engaging and thought provoking. The narration was done really well too.

I found that the story to be quite complex with a lot of characters, so I struggled to keep up with everything going on to some extent. However, this didn’t prevent me enjoying it, but often left me thinking and trying to make sense of everything.

Complex and fascinating

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The idiot of the title is Prince Muishkin, a young man who has just returned to Russia after being treated in Switzerland for epilepsy. The other main characters are Rogojin-another nobleman he meets on the train, Nastasia Philipovna-a woman they both love and who has a questionable reputation and Aglaya Epanchin-a young woman who Muishkin also "loves" and at one point looks like marrying.
I struggled with this book. I found the characters hard to believe and very shallow-especially some of the supporting ones. I should say this was not helped by the fact I listened to this as an audio book, and the narrator made many of the characters sound like something out of a Monty python sketch. I also found the book incredibly long with many of the passages being an excuse for Dostoevsky to tell a yarn of some sort. Having said that I did enjoy General Ivolgin-retired and unfortunate- and his tall tales of his exploits in the army and his time as a child with Napoleon in Moscow.
I also thought the explanation at the start of part 4 as to why you cannot write a novel about ordinary people was fantastic. But as a novel I did not like it.

Hard going for this idiot

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the characters develop slowly, keeping up with the names is a bit difficult, but the story is a masterpiece.

tremendous but a bit difficult to follow

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I'm new to this. Why the silly voices Mr narrator? most off-putting. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd read it.

Not the best

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Just wonderful narration, great character impersonation, brings great drama to the reading, wish he did more Dostoyevsky

Fantastic narration

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