{"product_id":"the-idiot-9780553213522","title":"The Idiot","description":"\u003ci\u003e\"My intention is to portray a truly beautiful soul.\" --Dostoevsky\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDespite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life--abject poverty, incessant gambling, the death of his youngest child--Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, \u003ci\u003eThe Idiot, \u003c\/i\u003e after completing\u003ci\u003e Crime and Punishment.\u003c\/i\u003e In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than with 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eExtortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing Myshkin's moral feelings, as Dostoevsky searches through the wreckage left by human misery to find \"man in man.\" \u003ci\u003eThe Idiot \u003c\/i\u003eis a quintessentially Russian novel, one that penetrates the complex psyche of the Russian people. \"They call me a psychologist,\" wrote Dostoevsky. \"That is not true. I'm only a realist in the higher sense; that is, I portray all the depths of the human soul.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky's life was a dark and dramatic as the great novels he wrote. He was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a former army surgeon whose drunken brutality led his own serfs to murder him by pouring vodka down his throat until he strangled. A short first novel, \u003ci\u003ePoor Folk \u003c\/i\u003e(1846) brought him instant success, but his writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. In prison he was given the \"silent treatment\" for eight months (guards even wore velvet soled boots) before he was led in front a firing squad. Dressed in death shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited execution, when suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence. He then spent four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to suffer from epilepsy, and he only returned to St. Petersburg a full ten years after he had left in chains. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHis prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a conservative and profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. But it was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete \u003ci\u003eCrime and Punishment\u003c\/i\u003e (1866), \u003ci\u003eThe Idiot \u003c\/i\u003e(1868-69), \u003ci\u003e The Possessed \u003c\/i\u003e(1871-72), \u003ci\u003e and The Brothers Karamazov \u003c\/i\u003e(1879-80). When Dostoevsky died in 1881, he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Bantam Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50623101436178,"sku":"9780553213522","price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_a9a4fcb8-c740-4c60-b327-517427d3ebdf.jpg?v=1756201863","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-idiot-9780553213522","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}