Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life-abject poverty,incessant gambling,the death of his firstborn child Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece,THE IDIOT,just two years after completing CRIME AND PUNISHMENY,In it ,a saintly man,Prinece Myshkin,is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth,power and sexual conqest than with the ideals of Christianity,Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woamn and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections.Extortion,scandal and murder follow,testing Myshkin's moral feelings as Dostoevsky searches thorugh the wreckage left by human misery to find"man in man"THE IDIOT is a quintessentially Russian novel,one that penetrates the complex psyche of the Russian people."They call me a psychologist,"wrote Dostoevsky,"That is not true,I'm only a reaklish in the higher sense,that is ,I portray all the depths the human soul." 作者简介: FYODOR MIKAILOVICH His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a conservative and profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels.But it was his for-tuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina,following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compuisive gambling,that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete Cime and Punishment(1866),The idiot (1868-69),The Possessed(1871-72),and The Brothers Karamazov(1879-80).When Dostoevsky dide in 1881,he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the mortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.