This study of natural goodness is Dostoevsky’s most touching novel. Prince Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, returns to Russia from a sanatorium in Switzerland in order to collect an inheritance. Before he has even arrived home he becomes involved with Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the fascinating Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. But this is only the main thread of a rich and complex book in which a dazzling host of characters, from generals to street urchins, present the picture of an entire society on the verge of dissolution. A tragicomic masterpiece.
