A positively good man, Prince Myshkin, returns from a stay at a sanitorium to Russia and finds himself torn between two women who are also both involved with another, a man obsessed with money named Ganya.
The book describes how, despite his honest and good nature and integrity, he is shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of society and those around him.
Structured in an awkward way the book is considered a difficult read, with Dostoevsky himself claiming that it was written in a hurried fashion.