Holy Fool

Jun 2017
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky tr. David McDuff - Penguin Classics, 2004
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Dostoyevsky's characters often experience extreme and conflicting emotions, and the two books of his that I had read before this one did much the same for me. I really liked Crime and Punishment for its thoughtful exploration of the mind of a proto-terrorist, and really disliked The Brothers Karamazov for its religious browbeating. The Idiot, I am pleased to report, is very much at the Crime and Punishment end of my affections, largely due to its wonderfully hilarious premise of a guileless man entering the snakepit of a corrupt society and causing utter chaos. Not that this was the author's intention, of course.
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