Humboldt's Gift | Literary Precedents

Humboldt's Gift Literary Precedents

As Philip Toynbee has pointed out, Humboldt's Gift is probably America's nearest approach to those great Russian masterpieces, The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880) by Dostoevsky. Like Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov, Charlie Citrine is a comic hero, a holy fool, a soulsearching rascal. All three novels are a spiritual counterattack against the ultimate nullity of a secular society.