
The Idiot
A New Translation
Fyodor Dostoevsky(Author)
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Will be published approx. on 21. July 2026
Book
Hardback
800 pages
978-1-324-09637-5 (ISBN)
Description
A haunting parable of innocence undone, The Idiot stands as Dostoevsky's most personal and most disquieting novel. It follows the gentle and guileless Prince Myshkin, recently returned to St Petersburg from treatment in a Swiss sanatorium, whose radical honesty and spiritual clarity set him at odds with the vanities and cruelties of Russian high society. His presence unravels a web of greed, desire and wounded pride as he becomes entangled with the beautiful, self-destructive Nastasya Filippovna and the tormented Rogozhin. Can goodness persist in a world built on deceit? Or does purity, in such a world, become its own kind of delusion? In The Idiot, Michael R. Katz accentuates Dostoevsky's dark ironies and turbulent rhythms while preserving the jagged emotional force of the original. This is the most faithful and compelling version yet of a masterpiece that still unsettles and still astonishes.
Michael R. Katz's translation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (ISBN 9781324095101) was praised as:
"Katz's lucid, unpretentious language opens up my favourite scenes, characters and even monologues." - Lan Samantha Chang, The Guardian
"Lively, fast-flowing.... the voiciest translation of the novel thus far. [Katz] writes at the fever pitch of speech, unleashing the speed and the chaos of the original." - Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker
Michael R. Katz's translation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (ISBN 9781324095101) was praised as:
"Katz's lucid, unpretentious language opens up my favourite scenes, characters and even monologues." - Lan Samantha Chang, The Guardian
"Lively, fast-flowing.... the voiciest translation of the novel thus far. [Katz] writes at the fever pitch of speech, unleashing the speed and the chaos of the original." - Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United States
Publishing group
W W Norton & Co Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 41 mm
Weight
666 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-324-09637-5 (9781324096375)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and many other novels. Michael R. Katz is the C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has translated over twenty Russian novels, including The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Fathers and Children, and Notes from Underground.