The Idiot

Prince Lev Myshkin returns to Russia after several years in a Swiss sanatorium, carrying little money and an openness that other people mistake for foolishness. On the train to Saint Petersburg he meets Parfyon Rogozhin, whose violent obsession with Nastasya Filippovna soon draws Myshkin into a circle of inheritance, sexual jealousy and social calculation. Myshkin’s compassion for Nastasya competes with his growing attachment to Aglaya Yepanchina, and his refusal to judge either woman becomes entangled with the ambitions of relatives, officials, businessmen and dependants. His goodness does not pacify the people around him; it exposes their shame, resentment and desire.

Set between Saint Petersburg and the nearby summer resort of Pavlovsk, the novel presents Imperial Russian society during the Great Reforms as a world in transition. Old aristocratic names coexist with new commercial fortunes, bureaucratic careers and restless younger generations. Public reputation, money and marriage remain instruments of power even as traditional hierarchies lose certainty. Through Myshkin’s epilepsy, his memories of execution and the escalating rivalry with Rogozhin, Dostoyevsky tests whether radical compassion can survive in a society organised around possession and humiliation. The result is a tragic social panorama in which innocence becomes both a moral challenge and a source of destruction.