Idiot (English and Russian Edition) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394604342 ISBN 13: 9780394604343

Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE MODERN LIBRARY, 1983

Synopsis

The MODERN LIBRARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE (NOT RUSSIAN LANGUAGE) HARDBACK EDITION WITH DUST JACKET. Translated by Constance Garnett, with illustrations by Boardman Robinson. 586 pages. THE IDIOT is a novel by the 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published serially in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1868–9. The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness and open-hearted simplicity lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting "the positively good and beautiful man." The novel examines the consequences of placing such a unique individual at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions and egoism of worldly society, both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved. The result, according to philosopher A.C. Grayling, is "one of the most excoriating, compelling and remarkable books ever written; and without question one of the greatest."

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women--the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia--both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin's honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett translation, Anna Brailovsky has corrected inaccuracies wrought by Garnett's drastic anglicization of the novel, restoring as much as possible the syntactical structure of the original.

From the Back Cover

“Nothing is outside Dostoevsky’s province. . . . Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.” —Virginia Woolf

Edition details

• Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE MODERN LIBRARY
• Publication date: 1983
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394604342
• ISBN 13: 9780394604343
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: BOARDMAN ROBINSON
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 586