After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose
his memory and ability to reason Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once
confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital - from greed murder and
nihilism to passion vanity and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet valued for his
openness and understanding Prince Myshkin finds himself entangled with two women in a position
he cannot bring himself to resolve. Dostoevsky who wrote that in the character of Prince
Myshkin he hoped to portray a "wholly virtuous man" shows the workings of the human mind and
our relationships with others in all their complex and contradictory nature. Populated by an
unforgettable cast of characters from the beautiful self-destructive Nastasya Filippovna to
the dangerously obsessed Rogozhin and the radical student Ippolit The Idiot is one of
Dostoevsky's most personal and intense works of fiction.
