The Idiot 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 leading character in the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man who is full of goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting the positively good and beautiful man. Howerver, returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him.The novel examines the consequences of placing such a unique individual at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions and egoism of worldly society, both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved.