The Idiot

The Idiot Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky - Nineteenth-century Russian writer and philosopher Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot (1868) concerns a Russian prince, Myshkin, who returns to Russia after a stint in a sanitarium and becomes entangled in a love triangle with two women, Nastasya and Aglaia. While Myshkin is good-natured to a fault, the competitive and insensitive impulses of those around him triumph over his aspirations. He loses both of his lovers to Rogozhin, a corrupt and wealthy man. The novel is known for its depth of characterization and ambivalent outlook on the moral systems and categories that operate in modern life.

The novel begins on a morning in November in St. Petersburg, Russia, when Prince Myshkin returns from a Swiss sanatorium, ostensibly for treatment for epilepsy and "idiocy." Myshkin, now in his late twenties, descends from one of the first Russian lines of nobility. The only person he knows in the city is Lizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin, a distant relation and the wife of a wealthy and esteemed general. The prince visits them and meets their three daughters, Aglaya, Adelaida, and Alexandra. Aglaya is noted to be the youngest and prettiest.