The Idiot

“A book that manages like no other to plunge fearlessly into suffering while at the same time illuminating the enduring, almost unspeakable beauty of the human.” —Laurie Sheck, The Atlantic “One of the most excoriating, compelling, and remarkable books ever written: and without question one of the greatest.” —A. C. Grayling “A masterpiece … a fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils… . [an] excellent new translation.” —The Guardian “McDuff’s language is rich and alive.” —The New York Times Book Review “[The Idiot’s] narrative is so compelling.” —Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His debut, the epistolary novella Poor Folk (1846), made his name. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with the politically subversive ‘Petrashevsky circle’ and until 1854 he lived in a convict prison in Omsk, Siberia. From this experience came The House of the Dead (1860-2). In 1860 he began the journal Vremya (Time). Already married, he fell in love with one of his contributors, Appollinaria Suslova, eighteen years his junior, and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. After the death of his first wife, Maria, in 1864, Dostoyevsky completed Notes from Underground and began work towards Crime and Punishment (1866). The major novels of his late period are The Idiot (1868), Demons (1871-2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He died in 1881.