The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868)

Prince Myshkin suffers from epilepsy; grew up under doctor's care in Switzerland and so was not familiar with Russian society. Whether due to his condition and background or whatever, he approaches others with complete trust and simplicity; he could achieve almost total empathic understanding with whoever was in front of him. He falls in love with a troubled beauty, Nastasya Filipovna - but it is perhaps moreso a love based on pity.

He also loves, in a more traditional sense, Aglaia Epanchin.

Rogozhin (who he meets in the first pages of the book) is almost his opposite; competes for Nastasya; and the way they finish the book together is pretty awful and effective.

I liked the book a lot. Read it in 35-minute chunks on the stairmaster, and I often didn't notice the time passing.

The Lebedev character was annoying; chronic liars are hard to place. Ippolit - dying of consumption - wrote a long-ish farewell address that was a good vehicle for discussing the theme of how we might live if we knew we only had a short time. Myshkin tells a story of a girl in Switzerland that he taught the students to treat with kindness; this was powerful.

I got a kick out of the scene where the imposter comes in to try to claim some of Myshkin's money. It was a perfectly pitched example of the way people act and speak when they have convinced themselves (if not wholeheartedly) that their "rights" have been violated.

I read that Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy, and that Myshkin was intended as a gentle, Christ-like figure. Dostoevsky apparently went through a lot, including exile in 1849 (when the Tsar, like most monarchs, was a bit touchy following the 1848 revolutions across Europe).