The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The Idiot

$20.99

Retail price: $31.95

Discount: 34%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Simon Vance

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Translator Constance Garnett
Length 22 hours 30 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

In The Idiot, 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 โ€œman in man.โ€

The Idiot is a quintessentially Russian novel, one that penetrates the complex psyche of the Russian people. โ€œThey call me a psychologist,โ€ wrote Dostoevsky. โ€œThat is not true. Iโ€™m only a realist in the higher sense; that is, I portray all the depths of the human soul.โ€

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevskyย (1821โ€“1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart had a profound and universal influence on the twentieth-century novel. He was born in Moscow, the son of a surgeon. Leaving the study of engineering for literature, he published Poor Folk in 1846. As a member of revolutionary circles in St. Petersburg, he was condemned to death in 1849. A last-minute reprieve sent him to Siberia for hard labor. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1859, he worked as a journalist and completed his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, as well as other works, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklistโ€™s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Constance Garnett (1862โ€“1946) translated the works of numerous Russian authors, including Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, and Turgenev.

Featured in these playlists...

Audiobook details

Narrator:
Simon Vance

ISBN:
9781483089102

Length:
22 hours 30 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Blackstone Publishing

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

“My intention is to portray a really beautiful soul.”

“Nothing is outside Dostoevsky’s province…Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.”

โ€œI think The Idiot to be a masterpieceโ€ฆa fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils.โ€

โ€œRivals any modern soap opera for complexity.โ€

Expand reviews
The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles