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."
Fyodor Dostoevsky the novel, remarking that "Only "Crime and Punishment" was read in 1866" and that Dostoevsky had managed to portray a Russian person aptly and realistically. Otherwise, it received a mixed reception from critics, with most of the negative responses coming from nihilists. Grigory Eliseev of the radical magazine "The Contemporary" called the novel a "fantasy according to which the entire student body is accused without exception of attempting murder and robbery". The novel's protagonist, the 26-year-old Prince Myshkin, returns to Russia after several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by Saint Petersburg society for his trusting nature and naivety, he