Open, honest, and a bit naïve, Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to Russia after a four-year stay at a Swiss sanatorium. Suffering from epilepsy, the young man is an outsider in the aristocracy—often mocked and taken advantage of by unscrupulous and greedy acquaintances. When he falls in love with the self-destructive Nastasya, the object of his friend Rogozhin's obsession, Myshkin's innocent nature is put to the test against the corrupt and dissolute Russian society.

Although Dostoevsky struggled greatly while writing it, The Idiot remained the favourite of all his works. His depiction of a truly good man pitted against the ills of society, the author drew heavily from his own life to create one of the most famous works of Russian literature of all time.

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