Cover of Idiot (Part 01 and 02)

Idiot (Part 01 and 02)

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chapter 1 of 28 Part I, Chapter 1

0:00 29:39
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Running time
15 h 42 min
Language
English
Read by
Martin Geeson
Translated by
Eva M. Martin

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About this recording

The extraordinary child-adult Prince Myshkin, confined for several years in a Swiss sanatorium suffering from severe epilepsy, returns to Russia to claim his inheritance and to find a place in healthy human society.

The teeming St Petersburg community he enters is far from receptive to an innocent like himself, despite some early successes and relentless pursuit by grotesque fortune-hunters. His naive gaucheries give rise to extreme reactions among his new acquaintance, ranging from anguished protectiveness to mockery and contempt.

But even before reaching the city, during the memorable train journey that opens the novel, he has encountered the demonic Rogozhin, the son of a wealthy merchant who is in thrall to the equally doomed Natasha Filippovna: beautiful, capricious and destructively neurotic, she joins with the two weirdly contrasted men in a spiralling dance of death... (Summary by Martin Geeson)

This project is Part 1 & 2 of the 4 part novel

Parts 3 & 4 of the novel

Other recordings of this book