{"product_id":"9780241739822","title":"The Idiot","description":"\u003ch3\u003eAuthor: Fyodor Dostoyevsky\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003ch4\u003eClassic fiction (pre c 1945)\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003ch5\u003ePublished on 11 September 2025 by Penguin Books Ltd (Penguin Classics) in the United Kingdom as part of 'the Penguin Clothbound Classics' series.\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003ch4\u003eHardback | 784 pages\u003cbr\u003e139 x 207 x 48mm | 890g\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003chr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDostoyevsky's great novel of suffering and sickness, innocence and greed, now in Penguin Clothbound ClassicsReturning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin - the titular '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. Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Dostoyevsky sought to portray in Prince Myshkin the purity of a 'truly beautiful soul' and explore the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDavid McDuff's translation brilliantly captures the novel's idiosyncratic and dream-like language and the nervous, elliptic flow of the narrative. This edition also contains an introduction by William Mills Todd III, which is a fascinating examination of the pressures on Dostoyevsky as he wrote the story of his Christ-like hero.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you enjoyed The Idiot, you might like Anton Chekhov's Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'McDuff's language is rich and alive'The New York Times Book Review'[The Idiot's] ... narrative is so compelling'Rowan Williams\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fyodor Dostoyevsky","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57390611857733,"sku":"9780241739822","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0994\/3721\/6069\/files\/9780241739822_59cdb66b-9d2a-4379-93f6-626daafe5d64.jpg?v=1773740019","url":"https:\/\/stripyduckbookshopcafe.co.uk\/products\/9780241739822","provider":"The Stripy Duck Bookshop Café","version":"1.0","type":"link"}