The Idiot (Version 2): Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Idiot (Version 2), credited to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Idiot (Version 2) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (Translated by Eva M. Martin.) Read in English by Bruce Pirie. Dostoyevsky considered “The Idiot” (published first in Russian in 1869) his “favourite child” — the novel in which he felt the greatest personal investment. We meet Lef Nicolaievitch Muishkin, a hereditary prince of the old Russian aristocracy, returning from abroad after only partially successful treatment for epilepsy. (Dostoyevsky himself was a lifelong sufferer from temporal lobe epilepsy, sometimes called “ecstatic” epilepsy. Experts have suggested that modern physicians would do well to study Dostoyevsky’s depiction of the condition.) Because of the debilitating severity of the disease during Muishkin’s childhood, people have come to think of him as an “idiot,” but in fact he is no simpleton. Rather, he is a man of almost saintly purity and compassion. That goodness is tested when the prince encounters a colorful and entertaining array of characters. In the course of events, the novel raises questions about how we confront our own mortality, shame and forgiveness, what it means to be “childlike,” and the influence on Russian society of new European ideas like materialism, atheism, pseudo-rational nihilism, and the changing role of women. It is also a love story, but that love is tainted and twisted by the baffling contradictions that lie within all human hearts. Dostoyevsky is an original master of psychological realism in fiction. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Idiot (Version 2)
• Author credits: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 50
• Listed recording duration: 29:05:40

Catalogue topics

• morality
• Russia
• nihilism
• atheism
• guilt
• materialism
• mortality
• status of women

Opening tracks: first 24 of 50

1. 01 - Part 1, Chapter 1 — 30:19
2. 02 - Part 1, Chapter 2 — 29:14
3. 03 - Part 1, Chapter 3 — 36:04
4. 04 - Part 1, Chapter 4 — 40:14
5. 05 - Part 1, Chapter 5 — 43:54
6. 06 - Part 1, Chapter 6 — 27:45
7. 07 - Part 1, Chapter 7 — 34:48
8. 08 - Part 1, Chapter 8 — 37:43
9. 09 - Part 1, Chapter 9 — 22:48
10. 10 - Part 1, Chapter 10 — 18:49
11. 11 - Part 1, Chapter 11 — 19:40
12. 12 - Part 1, Chapter 12 — 28:17
13. 13 - Part 1, Chapter 13 — 26:18
14. 14 - Part 1, Chapter 14 — 27:59
15. 15 - Part 1, Chapter 15 — 27:02
16. 16 - Part 1, Chapter 16 — 34:02
17. 17 - Part 2, Chapter 1 — 28:17
18. 18 - Part 2, Chapter 2 — 39:09
19. 19 - Part 2, Chapter 3 — 40:46
20. 20 - Part 2, Chapter 4 — 15:28
21. 21 - Part 2, Chapter 5 — 38:18
22. 22 - Part 2, Chapter 6 — 38:40
23. 23 - Part 2, Chapter 7 — 25:35
24. 24 - Part 2, Chapter 8 — 51:13

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.