Swetlana Geier, Fyodor Dostoevsky: Der Idiot (Hardcover, German language, 2003, Ammann)
Hardcover, 909 pages
German language
Published Sept. 1, 2003 by Ammann.
Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Fyodor Dostoyevsky set out to portray "a truly beautiful soul" colliding with the brutal reality of contemporary society. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive Prince Myshkin—known as "the idiot"—pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his circle. But after becoming infatuated with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna, Myshkin finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and, ultimately, murder. This new translation by David McDuff is sensitive to the shifting registers of the original Russian, capturing the nervous, elliptic flow of the narrative for a new generation of readers.
Got about a third through and realized there are so many books in the world that are not boring or written by christian supremacist, anti-semitic, nationalistic schmucks. I think I'll go read one of them.
Great work!
Although reading it was a bit tedious sometimes and it took me about a month to finish, it is really worth it. Many times I had to put down the book and reflect about what I just read and it's deeper meaning. A book that made me think and grateful.
It certainly takes some effort to get through this book, but it's worth it. Nothing much seems to happen and some parts are quite tedious (e.g. some of the long speeches), but in the end, I found I wanted to read through to see what would happen to the prince and the other characters next.
However, the story did sometimes get confusing due to the large array of characters that are frequently called by different names (according to the Slavic customs) and the quite archaic English translation (I was certainly happy with the built-in dictionary of my e-reader).
