The Idiot

HarperCollins is proud to present our range of timeless literary classics.

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

Discharged from a sanitorium, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg high society where his empathy and open heart soon mark him as an outsider in this colourful cast of society rogues and socialites, Nihilists and parvenus. Although he catches the eye of the beautiful and arch Aglaia, who torments him as much as she pursues him, the Prince's heart is captured by the beautiful but broken femme-fatale Nastasya who can't help but leave chaos in her wake, to tragic ends.

This masterpiece by Dostoyevsky is his most personal novel. Inspired by the Passion of Christ, The Idiot is at once a biting satire of Imperial Russia, and a timeless portrait of the struggle of a pure soul to navigate a corrupt world.