The Idiot

I know for sure that if I had two or three secure years for this novel... I would write a work that they would talk about for a hundred years.' So said Dostoyevsky as he struggled to bring The Idiot into existence, and sure enough it has lasted longer than the hundred years he predicted. In his creation of Prince Myshkin, The Idiot, a character seeking perfection and yet fraught with ambiguity, Dostoyevsky anticipated the universal metaphysical unease of succeeding generations, and produced an unforgettable masterpiece.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His father was a physician and he was the second son of seven children. After leaving school he studied at the Military Engineering College in St Petersburg, graduating as an officer. His first story was published to great acclaim in 1846, but in 1849 he was arrested and sentenced to death for his involvement in the 'Petrashevsky circle', a group of naive, radical intellectuals who modelled themselves on French socialists such as Fourier. The Tsar ordered a public 'execution', an eloquent account of which is given by Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, and at the moment of execution the proceedings were halted and the sentences commuted to hard labour in Siberia.
In 1863 Dostoyevsky travelled abroad and met Mlle Suslova, whom he subsequently married. He became addicted to gambling, which plunged him into debt, and it was his second wife, Anna Grigoryevena who helped him out of his financial difficulties. He returned to Russia in 1873 and died there in 1881. His most important works were Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1865-66), The Gambler (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Devils (1871) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
Dostoyevsky faced gargantuan problems when writing the book. He went through at least eight plans and many variations of each plan. Just before submitting the first part to his publisher, he destroyed most of what he had written and virtually startedwriting