The Idiot

n order to reach perfection, one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal.

A descendant of one of Russian nobility’s oldest families, the gentle, good natured and epileptic Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to St. Petersburg after spending four years in a Swiss sanatorium. Taken to be an ‘idiot’, Prince Myshkin’s life changes drastically after he stumbles upon a photograph of Nastasya Filippovna during a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin. Entangled in a web of love, betrayal, and murder, the Christ-like Prince Myshkin struggles to negotiate a chaotic and corrupt Russian society.

Regarded as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s most autobiographical work, The Idiot, as the author wrote in a letter in 1868, was meant “to depict a positively good and beautiful human being”. Through the exploration of the psychological complexities and idiosyncrasies of modern Russian society, Dostoevsky presents the life of a Russian Holy Fool in a world of moral emptiness and degradation.

The Idiot remains an evergreen classic.