Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive Prince Myshikin – known as 'the idiot' – pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal and, finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, Dosteyevsky set out to portray the purity of 'a truly beautiful soul' and to explore the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.

About the Author

Moscow-born Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) served time in a convict prison for his political alliances, and in his later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His novels include The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov. Ronald Wilks has translated numerous volumes for the Classics, including most recently Chekhov's stories and forthcoming editions of Tolstoy's stories, and Gogol's stories and plays.