The Idiot.

Dostoevsky set himself the hardest of tasks in this novel, to depict a genuinely good man, and the result is one of his most moving and unsettling works.

What it's about

The Idiot follows Prince Myshkin, who returns to Russia after years abroad being treated for illness, an open, trusting, almost holy innocent thrown among the calculating, passionate and cynical people of St Petersburg high society. His guilelessness draws others to him and exposes them to themselves, and he is caught between two women, the wounded, magnificent Nastasya Filippovna and the gentle Aglaya, in a web of love, money and pride that tightens toward disaster. Around them swirl gamblers, schemers and desperate souls, each measured against the prince's strange purity.

Themes

The book asks whether real goodness can survive in a corrupt and self-seeking world, and what such goodness costs the one who bears it. Compassion, faith, beauty and the destructiveness of wounded passion run through it, along with Dostoevsky's abiding concern with suffering and grace.

Why it still matters

Few novels probe so deeply the collision of innocence and the world, or ask so searchingly what it would mean to live by love. Myshkin remains one of literature's most haunting figures, and the questions the book raises have not aged.

Who it's for

For readers of the great Russian novels, for those who love fiction that wrestles with faith and morality, and for anyone ready to be moved and troubled in equal measure.