Written by Bruno Passos

The Idiot
Author: Fiodor Dostoievski

There are many book reviews that seek to teach us something, convince us of some nobler morality, reveal “great truths” to us, these types usually seek to appropriate the author’s grandiloquence as if that were also the character of the review writer. 
This type of analysis has its importance, it is true, but here we are going to take another path, albeit just as pretentious. The only difference is that instead of emphasizing the moral qualities of the work, we will emphasize its sensitivity and, thus, if I am lucky, I will deceive you, noble reader, implying that I am as sensitive and insightful as the author of the work.

 In The Idiot, Dostoyevsky allows us intimacy, he doesn’t care how silly a pure heart may seem to us, we never judge his main character by his actions, no matter how bizarre they may seem.

What we really think is how overwhelming love can be (even if it settles in the blink of an eye), and we also think that for jealousy to be real, it just needs to be felt. The idiot is an ode to perceptions, and perceptions are worth more than facts here.
Dostoyevsky is, above all, a genius esthete, who understood better than many that a good story just needs transparent sensations, even if they all sound ridiculous. And in this way, even the greatest of absurdities will be the most realistic of tales.