Crime and Punishment

Author(s): Fyodor Dostoyevsky

FICTION

'The old woman was merely a sickness . . .it wasn't a human being I killed, it was a principle!'

A troubled young man commits 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 for the murder is to benefit mankind. So begins one of the greatest novels ever written, a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller, and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption.


Crime and Punishment is probably Dostoevsky's most read and known novel and one of the most famous literary works of all time. Published in instalments in 1866 in the journal Russkij vestnik (The Russian Messenger), it is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, which the author describes in a letter to the editor: "A young man, expelled from university, of a petty bourgeois family, very poor, decides to suddenly emerge from his sad situation. Raskolnikov divides men into two species: the great men, the "Napoleons", which are allowed to live and act above the moral law and to which, in the name of their greatness and the benefit that humanity draws from their existence, "everything is allowed"; the common people, the "lice", which must instead be subject to laws and common sense, and against which the Napoleons have the right to life and death."


"Many consider Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky's finest masterpiece; of his novels, it is certainly the one that would profit most from an exact and well-informed translation, locating its 'newspaper' atmosphere in appropriate contemporary speech. This is has now received from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who also provide illuminating notes. They are to be congratulated on an outstanding achievement."
–John Bayley


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780099981909
  • : Random House UK
  • : VINTAGE ARROW - MASS MARKET
  • : July 1993
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • : Paperback