Idiot

Prince Lev Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium carrying an honesty that the society he enters can only read as foolishness. Dostoevsky places that goodness inside the intrigues of nineteenth-century Russian aristocracy and watches what happens: Myshkin becomes both a target and a mirror, drawing out the cynicism, calculation and self-deception of everyone around him. The novel works through morality, mental health, money and the price a genuinely compassionate person pays in a corrupt world, and its psychological portraiture ranks among the most searching the author produced. Why it endures: • Centred on a single guileless figure set against a scheming society • Set among the Russian aristocracy of the nineteenth century • Themes of innocence, hypocrisy, illness and moral cost • A cornerstone text for readers of Russian literature For students of world classics and readers of psychological fiction. Stocked by Boipoka.