Description

A poverty-stricken student murders a pawnbroker in St Petersburg, then finds guilt harder to escape than the law.

TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY
A troubled young man commits what he believes is the perfect crime: the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but convinces himself that his motive is not merely personal gain, but the benefit of mankind.
So begins one of the defining works of psychological fiction: a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption.
As guilt, fear and pride consume him, Raskolnikov is forced to confront the consequences of an idea taken to its most terrible conclusion. Around him move poverty, suspicion, spiritual longing and the possibility of grace.
Crime and Punishment is a classic Russian novel about murder, conscience, poverty and moral struggle. For readers of literary crime fiction and philosophical classics, Dostoevsky’s masterpiece remains one of the most searching studies of guilt ever written.

Publisher Review

Dostoevsky makes Martin Amis seem as if he was writing 130 years ago and that Dostoevsky is writing now. Read all of Dostoevsky. These books are for now and they matter, because it's up to us to call a halt to our TV producers, politicians, gutless artists, poets and writers: these "teenagers of all ages" who are propelling us towards a consumerist hell of disposability over quality Dostoevsky's finest masterpiece * John Bayley * Donne, Herbert, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dostoevsky, Henry James - these are the great psychologists - far greater than Freud or Klein or Jung The best translation of Crime and Punishment currently available... An especially faithful re-creation...with a coiled-spring kinetic energy... Don't miss it * Washington Post * Crime and Punishment...is about a big subject - the meaning of life - yet it is gritty, gripping and it's depiction of city life gives it a modern, timeless feel This fresh, new translation...provides a more exact, idiomatic, and contemporary rendition of the novel that brings Fyodor Dostoevsky's tale achingly alive... It succeeds beautifully * San Francisco Chronicle *