27 h 33 minAudiobook16 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 676 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 676 pagesAbout this book
What if your greatest kindness makes you the easiest person in the room to destroy?
Prince Lev Myshkin returns to Russia after years of treatment for epilepsy in Switzerland. He has no money, no plan, and no skill at lying. In Petersburg society, where rank and wealth shape every encounter, his honesty draws people close—and makes them doubt his mind.
Myshkin wants to ease the pain he sees in others. But Nastasya Filippovna’s wounded pride, Rogozhin’s jealous passion, and Aglaya Epanchin’s longing for honest feeling pull him into competing claims of love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky turns these encounters into a searching question: can compassion help people without becoming another source of hurt?
What you’ll discover
- An outsider without armor Meet a prince who speaks to servants and generals with the same disarming openness.
- Love tangled with pity Explore the uneasy distance between wanting to save someone and knowing what they need.
- A society keeping score Enter drawing rooms where money, ambition, and shame press beneath the surface of polite talk.
- Pride behind the beauty Discover Nastasya Filippovna, caught between a longing for love and contempt for herself.
- Goodness under pressure Weigh the prince’s compassion against a world that often mistakes gentleness for weakness.
Is it for you?
This is for readers who like novels of ideas and strong feeling, and for anyone curious about Russian life and the question of whether goodness can survive in the world. It may suit you less if you want a fast, tidy plot.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A prince arrives on a winter train
- Honesty wins him a place in the Epanchin house
- Nastasya's birthday party burns money
- Pity and passion pull at the same woman
- Summer at Pavlovsk and Aglaya's pride
- Ippolit and his necessary explanation
- Innocence meets a world ruled by money
- Beauty, compassion and the shadow of illness
- How Dostoyevsky tells it and what to watch
Who’s who
- Prince Lev MyshkinA kind, honest young nobleman back from a Swiss clinic, who sees into people's pain and wants only to ease it.
- Parfyon RogozhinA merchant's son with a sudden fortune, who loves Nastasya Filippovna with a jealous, consuming passion.
- Nastasya FilippovnaA strikingly beautiful, proud woman shaped by an early wrong, torn between longing for love and contempt for herself.
- Aglaya EpanchinThe youngest Epanchin daughter, clever, proud and mocking, who wants a life of honest feeling and cannot say so.
- Ganya IvolginGeneral Epanchin's ambitious young secretary, poor and ashamed, who is tempted to marry for money.
- Lizaveta Prokofyevna EpanchinThe general's wife and the prince's distant relative, quick tempered and warm, who wants her daughters safely and happily settled.
- General Ivan EpanchinA wealthy, vain and fairly good natured official who wants his family to rise in society.
- Ippolit TerentyevA bitter, dying teenager who craves attention and a voice before his time runs out.
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- 15-minute summary
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Language: Italiano
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
A prince arrives on a winter train
The novel opens on a cold November morning on a train running into Petersburg. Two young men share a third class carriage and start to talk. One is Prince Myshkin, thin, fair, wrapped in a thin cloak, coming back from Switzerland with a small bundle. The other is Parfyon Rogozhin, dark, heavy and restless, who has just inherited a huge fortune from his father.
The prince is open at once. He answers every question, including the rude ones, and he tells the strangers his illness, his poverty and his purpose. He says he has almost no relatives left in Russia and hopes to call on a distant kinswoman, General Epanchin's wife. A clerk on the train listens and sneers, but the prince does not seem to notice the sneer. His lack of defense is the first thing the reader learns about him.
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The author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–1881 · Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist born in Moscow in 1821. He lived in Saint Petersburg and spent years in Siberia after his arrest in 1849. He wrote Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868–1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880). He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.
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What is The Idiot by Dostoyevsky about?
It follows Prince Myshkin, a kind and trusting man who returns to Russia after treatment for epilepsy. In Petersburg society he is caught between two women and a jealous rival, and his goodness is tested by money, pride and passion.
Why is the book called The Idiot?
Other characters call Myshkin an idiot because he is naive, honest and unworldly. Dostoyevsky draws on the Russian idea of the holy fool, someone who seems simple yet sees more clearly than clever people do.
Who are the main characters in The Idiot?
The main figures are Prince Myshkin, the merchant Rogozhin, the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya Epanchin. Around them stand Aglaya's family, the ambitious Ganya Ivolgin, the clerk Lebedev and the dying young man Ippolit.
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