Prince Myshkin Prince Myshkin Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot". Dostoevsky wanted to create a character that was "entirely positive... with an absolutely beautiful nature", someone who is truly 'Christian'. According to Joseph Frank, the character of Prince Myshkin approaches "the extremest incarnation of the Christian ideal of love that humanity can reach in its present form, but he is torn apart by the conflict between the contradictory imperatives of his apocalyptic aspirations and his earthly limitations." Prince Myshkin has been in Switzerland for the last four years, at a
The Gift of Asher Lev the Ladover group . The novel may also point toward the succession of the Boyan dynasty, in which a son-in-law of the late rebbe, Orthodox but not Hasidic, approved having his son be the next rebbe. Asher Lev – narrator; a middle-aged painter and Ladover Jew who resides in the south of France. Devorah Lev – Asher's wife, an author of children's books. As a small child, Devorah was hidden in a Paris apartment for two years in order to evade the Nazi concentration camps, in which both of her parents perished. Rocheleh Lev – Asher and Devorah's intelligent eleven-year-old