The Idiot also been well received. The Idiot The Idiot (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is a novel by the 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published serially in the journal "The Russian Messenger" in 1868–9. The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting "the positively good and beautiful man."
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