The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky?s masterful translation ofThe Idiot is destined to stand with their versions ofCrime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, andDemons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.After his great portrayal of a guilty man inCrime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out inThe Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and ?be among people.? Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant?s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this ?positively beautiful man? on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.ReviewPraise for Pevear and Volokhonsky?s translation of Crime and Punishment:?Reaches as close to Dostoevsky?s Russian as is possible in English. . . . The original?s force and frightening immediacy is captured. . . . The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation will become the standard English version.? -Chicago TribuneFrom the Back CoverRichard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's masterful translation of The Idiot is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov," and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment," Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and "be among people." Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant's son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this "positively beautiful man" on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.About the AuthorAbout the Translators:Richard Pevear has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Savinio, Pavel Florensky, and Henri Volohonsky, as well as two books of poetry. He has received fellowships or grants for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the French Ministry of Culture.Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad. She has translated works by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff into Russian. Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have translatedDead Souls andThe Collected Tales by Nikolai Gogol, andThe Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons, andThe Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. They were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of The Brothers Karamazov, and more recently Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France.Excerpt.