The Idiot

Child-like, epileptic Prince Myshkin returns to Russia and gets tangled up in a doomed back-and-forth love obsession, into which he pulls another teasing girl to complete it to a very flighty love quadrangle. We have to see him be pushed around by his own naive emotions and endless good will towards everyone, and by manipulations of his friends and foes. And in between it all we meet a wide range of characters, having long wordy encounters. Even though Dostoyevsky is obviously remarkable with his character descriptions, I have to only give this 3 stars because despite the novel's concise message, I found most of its characters and their often too-long monologues very frustrating. Some characters and plot-lines that were only supposed to be side-stories, expanded and took over whole parts (especially the inheritance plot in part 2 and the very tedious Hippolite in part 3).