In considering Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot', a novel less easily defined in terms of plot and ideas than his other major fictional works, Sarah Young addresses problems in the novel unresolved by previous interpretations, and in doing so fills a significant gap in Dostoevsky studies.

Acknowledgements; A Note on Transliterations and Translations; Introduction; I. Reading The Idiot: The Hero and Other Problems; II. Interactive Narrating in the Idiot: The Scripting Impulse; 1. The Disappearing Heroine; I. Creating the Heroine: Rogozhin's Story; II. Nastas'ia Filippovnas's Lie: The Struggle Against Objectification; III. The Heroine Appears: Two Skandaly; IV. The Heroine Disappears: Control and Interpretation; V. Confrontation and Reverberation; VI. Freedom and Necessity: The Ideological Heroine; 2. Compassionate Realism and the Principles of Saintly Scripting; 1. The Foundations of Myshkin's Script in Narrative; II. The Foundations of Myshkin's Script in Action; III. The Foundations of Myshkin's Script in Experience; IV. Rocking the Foundations; 3. Self and other in Dostoevsky's Aesthetic Activity; I. Ippolit and the Other; II. Time, Narration and the Other; III. The Narrator's Novel; IV: Challenging the Narrator's Novel; Conclusion; Abbreviations; Notes; Bibliography