Dostoevsky's most personal and autobiographical novel, The Idiot tests the author's views on goodness against the flaws of a power-hungry society.
Prince Myshkin, the novel's central character, is good-hearted and pure. When he returns to St. Petersburg to collect a large inheritance after spending years in a Swiss sanatorium in treatment for epilepsy, it's clear the intellectuals around him view him as simple and daft. On the way home, Myshkin meets the wealthy Rogozhin, whose obsession with the beauty Nastasya Filippovna draws Myshkin into a terribly tangled web of romance that anchors for the rest of the book. The many courtships and manipulations unfold against the backdrop of a society marked by the consequences of power-seeking and money, which press up against Myshkin: the Christ-like pinnacle of innocence.
In his powerful and tragic conclusion, Dostoevsky takes readers to the brink of his most pressing and evergreen question: Can goodness persist under these conditions?
