The Idiot Introduction by Richard Pevear

The Idiot (1868), written under the appalling personal circumstances Dostoevsky endured while travelling in Europe, not only reveals the author's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, but also affords his most powerful indictment of a Russia struggling to emulate contemporary Europe while sinking under the weight of Western materialism. It is the portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society in which a "positively good man" clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his moral idealism. Meticulously faithful to the original, this new translation includes explanatory notes and a critical introduction by W.J. Leatherbarrow.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky live in France. They have also translated <i>Crime and Punishment, Notes from the Underground,</i> and <i>Demons</i> by Dostoevsky. They were awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>.