The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The idiot of the title is Prince Muishkin, a young man who has just returned to Russia after being treated in Switzerland for epilepsy. The other main characters are Rogojin-another nobleman he meets on the train, Nastasia Philipovna-a woman they both love and who has a questionable reputation and Aglaya Epanchin-a young woman who Muishkin also "loves" and at one point looks like marrying.
I struggled with this book. I found the characters hard to believe and very shallow-especially some of the supporting ones. I should say this was not helped by the fact I listened to this as an audio book, and the narrator made many many of the characters sound like something out of a Monty python sketch. I also found the book incredibly long with many of the passages being an excuse for Dostoevsky to tell a yarn of some sort. Having said that I did enjoy General Ivolgin "retired and unfortunate" and his tall tales of his exploits in the army and his time as a child with Napoleon in Moscow.
I also thought the explanation at the start of part 4 as to why you cannot write a novel about ordinary people was fantastic. But as a novel I did not like it. 4/10

For a much more positive view see this excellent review by AS Byatt from 2004.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/highereducation.classics