The Idiot takes place in Russia, between St. Petersburg and Pavlovsk, a summer resort nearby, from late November to early July of the following year. The Conclusion takes the prince back to Switzerland, from where he set out at the start of the book.
Part One fits into a single day, a Wednesday at the end of November, from the Warsaw train that arrives at nine in the morning until close to midnight, when Nastasya Filippovna leaves with Rogozhin. Part Two skips six months, during which the prince travels to Moscow to receive his inheritance and Petersburg knows him only through rumors, and unfolds between Rogozhin's house on Gorokhovaya Street and Lebedev's dacha in Pavlovsk, at the start of June.
Part Three covers a little more than one day in June in Pavlovsk, from the evening at the Epanchins' house to the prince's meeting with Nastasya in the street the following dawn. Part Four runs from a week after the green bench to the two weeks of rumors and the interrupted wedding, and ends again in Petersburg, at the house on Gorokhovaya Street.
Dostoevsky wrote the novel abroad, in Geneva, Vevey, Milan and Florence, fleeing creditors, on a trip planned for three months that lasted four years. The first seven chapters came out in The Russian Messenger in January 1868, and the novel was serialized in 1868 and 1869.