The Idiot

痛苦與疾病、純真與貪婪的偉大小說──現收錄於《企鵝布面經典叢書》

從瑞士療養院回到聖彼得堡後，溫柔且天真的癲癇患者梅什金王子——書名中的「白痴」——拜訪了遠房親戚葉潘欽將軍，並迅速以其真誠的性格贏得將軍、將軍夫人及三位千金的好感。然而，當他偶然瞥見一張美麗的娜斯塔霞・菲利波芙娜的照片後，命運便陷入混亂。他對她一見傾心，不久便被捲入錯綜複雜的三角戀，陷入勒索、背叛，直至最終的謀殺之網。受基督受難形象的啟發，杜斯妥也夫斯基試圖在梅什金身上展現「真正美麗的靈魂」的純潔，並探討天真與善良在腐敗世界中所面臨的險境。

大衛・麥達夫（David McDuff）的譯本出色地捕捉了小說夢幻般、獨特的語言風格，以及緊張而斷續的敘事流動。本書版本同時收錄了威廉・米爾斯・陶德三世（William Mills Todd III）的導言，深入探討杜斯妥也夫斯基在創作這位「如同基督」的主人公時所承受的壓力。

若您喜歡《白痴》，也可參考《企鵝經典》系列中出版的契訶夫《六號病房及其他故事》。

「麥達夫的語言豐富而鮮活。」 ——《紐約時報書評》

「《白痴》的敘事極具吸引力。」 ——羅恩・威廉斯

Dostoyevsky's great novel of suffering and sickness, innocence and greed, now in Penguin Clothbound Classics

Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin - the titular 'idiot' - pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife, and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Dostoyevsky sought to portray in Prince Myshkin the purity of a 'truly beautiful soul' and explore the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.

David McDuff's translation brilliantly captures the novel's idiosyncratic and dream-like language and the nervous, elliptic flow of the narrative. This edition also contains an introduction by William Mills Todd III, which is a fascinating examination of the pressures on Dostoyevsky as he wrote the story of his Christ-like hero.

If you enjoyed The Idiot, you might like Anton Chekhov's Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

'McDuff's language is rich and alive'
The New York Times Book Review

'[The Idiot's] ... narrative is so compelling'
Rowan Williams