The Idiot [Blackstone]

By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrated by: Robert Whitfield

Length: 22 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Critic reviews

"Nothing is outside Dostoevsky's province....Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading." (Virginia Woolf)

it starts off strong then sputters out.

narrartion was spot on , it's the story that is lacking. russian names are so hard to keep track of. The story is is very well written and griping in the first half of the book, but it goes off the rails after the summer vacation. i have given this 5 stars because Dostoyevsky captured in the idiot , the first signs of a society descending into a dark age. this book was published in 1869 and 48 years later the Bolsheviks would execute the czar and bring about an apocalyptic destruction of russian society with their progressive insanity.

you could probably write a book on the social and societal implications espoused within the idiot, leading it all to the Bolsheviks Revolution. that book would be worth reading, and the idiot is worth reading on this alone as well. im no historian but its clear that Dostoyevsky wasn't pulling this all out of the air, his art was imitating life.

Absolutely perfect.

Where does The Idiot rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I'm fairly liberal with 5 star reviews, If I thoroughly enjoy something it gets 5 stars.

The Idiot was the first time I had to re-think my practice because it is so fantastic I feel as though I should be able to rate it higher.

The narration is superb and Robert Whitfield does an excellent job of making every character spring immediately to life and the extended dialogue in many of Dostoevsky's scenes is a real treat.

I recommend this 100% without reservations.

Intriquing, perhaps because the point isn't clear

The performance was excellent. I purchased "The Iditot" because I enjoyed both "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov" enormously and found them both to be books that provoke thought. They had depth. But though I was intrigued and engaged while listening to "The Idiot", I kept hoping to see what the point of it all is, and did not see a point to it. It is almost a soap-opera like story, doesn't even have humor (the D'Artagnan books are also soap-opera-like, but there is adventure and humor). Myshkin is not an idiot, of course, and modern-day psychologists would certainly deal with him differently. At times he seems, aside from being an epileptic, like he is on "the spectrum", as we might say today. He is certainly very naive, has no concept of what love or marriage should be, and it is almost hard to believe that he wasn't exposed even through literature to some idea of what those were about in his time. It is very unclear what the purpose of developing such a character was. In the first chapter we hear him talk about the evils of capital punishment, a promising point, it is never returned to, and - I won't spoil the end, as something I read did for me - I'll just say that there would have been a point to revisit those thoughts later on but they were not at all revisited. I saw that Dostoevsky himself said that Myshkin is "the positively good and beautiful man". I don't see that. Yes, at times he was very gentle and kind, but much of what he did himself was not really considerate, maybe not intentionally, but ignorance or naïveté should not excuse all behavior. I also don't see how a person can be considered so good if he does nothing of any value with his life. Once he returns to Russia, even with his illness, he could have found something useful to do. He claimed he loved children and got along with them so well. Why didn't he volunteer to work at an orphanage? Being a supposed "prince" should not absolve him of needing to do something useful in the world, certainly not if you want to claim he is the model of goodness. I've seen him referred to as "Christ-like". Nah. I don't see that at all.
I started out hoping to be enthralled once again, but was not.

Pretty darn Russian

What made the experience of listening to The Idiot [Blackstone] the most enjoyable?

The title "The Idiot" is enjoyably ironic.

What did you like best about this story?

The matriarch of one of the families is, as we probably still are, consumed with how her family appears to society. It gnaws her. The narrator casually tosses off a comment that describes her. "If you have wart on forehead or nose, you always fancy no one has anything else to do than stare at your wart , make fun of it, despise you for it, even though you have discovered America."

What does Robert Whitfield bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I could not have sounded out the legion of Russian names. The narrator easily navigates through them.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The character with "consumption" is compelling. If I wasn't sure before, I am now. I don't want consumption. Also a cautionary tale to beware when the fiendish coquette and/or loose woman is around. Does it take a woman to be able to see from a mile away that things will go south with her around?

Any additional comments?

When the society discussion turns to self-preservation, self-destruction, nihilism, etc., I was glad the author had one of the characters tell his co-horts they were boring. They moved on and the pace picked up.
I liked Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov better, but this was also good.

A Classic, but not so memorable

The performance great.
The style of the book is typical for a Russian writers of the day, yet in my opinion, it lacks profound observations and meaningful fragments so common in other works.

Outstanding translation and performance

This was an outstanding translation and performance of the famed novel the idiot. I highly recommend it.

Philosophy wrapped around a complex story

Filled with a panoply of impossible characters remains interesting until the end. The Russian character is revealed through this unlikely collection from the rich to the poor, the smart to the stupid, the scheming to the naive. Wonderful read

Read Russian lit - don't listen to it

This was a good story and it moves along at a decent speed which is remarkable in Russian literature. I've read some and listened to some, and I'm finally convinced that it is too dense to enjoy as an audiobook. It just turns you around. And because the patronymics are not clearly laid out, the first half of the audiobook is spent trying to figure out which goes with which character. It is a good story and the characters are good, but I almost feel that it could have been a novella, it is so odd and charming but gets weigh laid with heavier material in the middle.

Exceptional, intense, and thought-provoking

Dostoevsky delivers again- another masterpiece from the Russian master.

"The Idiot" is complex and profound. The characters, conversations, and happenings are intriguing from first to last.

A gentle nudge, though, that if you are new to Dostoevsky, you'd be better served starting with "Brothers Karamazov" or (my personal favorite) "Crime and Punishment," at those two books are both a tad more accessible and, thematically, more redemptive.

Still, "The Idiot" is well worth a read and this narration was very well done.

Come along then...only you

This is said to be Dostoevsky's favorite novel. It has a protagonist who he had desired to be, even though in the story, it is questionable whether Prince Myshkin succeeded or not and what was to be accomplished. And it is more questionable as to whether or not Myshkin is a hero or anti-hero or none at all because of the whirlwind he caused when he entered into these people's lives. Nevertheless, it is a great novel, even if it does drag a bit (Aglaia was a bit annoying). The audio was superb. It is great when a male narrator can pull off the female characters fairly well. I had in mind though that Nastasya would sound a bit more stronger in tone of voice. I guess I say this because she was independent-minded, and really took control of her own fate for a while after Totsky. Aglaia was done perfectly -she sounded innocent and like a know-it-all sometimes but in a child-like way - as was Prince Myshkin and many others. Rogozhin had to be my favorite. The narrator portrayed him as cold and crafty, and you can really feel the bitterness in his voice, even when it seems he is being nice. The bitterness dies out in the end in chapter 11 or the last part.

Overall, this novel leaves a lot of questions to be answered, specifically about Myshkin. It is not better than Brothers Karamazov, but it is the most in-depth psychological book Fyodor ever wrote in terms of his characters.