The Idiot (Unabridged)

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His father was a physician and he was the second son of seven children. After leaving school he studied at the Military Engineering College in St Petersburg, graduating as an officer. His first story was published to great acclaim in 1846, but in 1849 he was arrested and sentenced to death for his involvement in the 'Petrashevsky circle', a group of naive, radical intellectuals who modelled themselves on French socialists such as Fourier. The Tsar ordered a public 'execution', an eloquent account of which is given by Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, and at the moment of execution the proceedings were halted and the sentences commuted to hard labour in Siberia. In 1863 Dostoyevsky travelled abroad and met Mlle Suslova, whom he subsequently married. He became addicted to gambling, which plunged him into debt, and it was his second wife, Anna Grigoryevena who helped him out of his financial difficulties. He returned to Russia in 1873 and died there in 1881. His most important works were Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1865–66), The Gambler (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Devils (1871) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).