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The Idiot [Blackstone]

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The Idiot [Blackstone]

By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
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About this listen

 Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life - abject poverty, incessant gambling, and the death of his firstborn child - Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, The Idiot, just two years after completing Crime and Punishment. In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."©2000 Blackstone Audiobooks. Originally published in 1880 in Russia. Classics Crime

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Critic reviews

"Nothing is outside Dostoevsky's province.... Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading." ( Virginia Woolf)
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the characters develop slowly, keeping up with the names is a bit difficult, but the story is a masterpiece.

tremendous but a bit difficult to follow

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I enjoyed this book and found it engaging and thought provoking. The narration was done really well too.

I found that the story to be quite complex with a lot of characters, so I struggled to keep up with everything going on to some extent. However, this didn’t prevent me enjoying it, but often left me thinking and trying to make sense of everything.

Complex and fascinating

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Just wonderful narration, great character impersonation, brings great drama to the reading, wish he did more Dostoyevsky

Fantastic narration

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This is far short of the excellent TBK and Crime & Punishment. very slow and confusing start that really takes a lot of concentration to stay interested and to sort all the characters out.
Im not a fan of Dostoyevsky's comedy plots, i prefer his more philosophical novels.

this seems to be a story of a collection of idiots and absurd cartoon characters that would leave Dickens embarrassed.


Good narration apart from some if the pantomime interpretations if the female characters. It's all a bit Hinge & Bracket.

Hard going pantomime

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Love this story from the first minute, right through to the end! The characters are amazing. Long live wolf!! 

Absolutely amazing! What a storyteller/author! 

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The idiot of the title is Prince Muishkin, a young man who has just returned to Russia after being treated in Switzerland for epilepsy. The other main characters are Rogojin-another nobleman he meets on the train, Nastasia Philipovna-a woman they both love and who has a questionable reputation and Aglaya Epanchin-a young woman who Muishkin also "loves" and at one point looks like marrying.
I struggled with this book. I found the characters hard to believe and very shallow-especially some of the supporting ones. I should say this was not helped by the fact I listened to this as an audio book, and the narrator made many of the characters sound like something out of a Monty python sketch. I also found the book incredibly long with many of the passages being an excuse for Dostoevsky to tell a yarn of some sort. Having said that I did enjoy General Ivolgin-retired and unfortunate- and his tall tales of his exploits in the army and his time as a child with Napoleon in Moscow.
I also thought the explanation at the start of part 4 as to why you cannot write a novel about ordinary people was fantastic. But as a novel I did not like it.

Hard going for this idiot

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I'm new to this. Why the silly voices Mr narrator? most off-putting. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd read it.

Not the best

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It was not easy to read for me, but I am glad that I finished it. Some parts might make me read/listen them again.

Recommended

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Abandoned about 70% through. It was a promising start - reminiscent of Tolstoy, but it just got deeper and deeper into an endless waffle about vague topics by transient characters, none of which were properly formed. The emotions are incomprehensible and the motives are peculiar. I just cannot recommend this.

Too much of nothing

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