TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY
Consumed by the idea of his own special destiny, immured in poverty and deprivation, Rashkolnikov is drawn to commit a terrible crime. In the aftermath, Rashkolnikov is dogged by madness, guilt and a calculating detective, and a feverish cat-and-mouse game unfolds. The only hope for redemption, if Rashkolnikov can but recognise it, lies in the virtuous and faithful Sonya.
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About the Author
Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November 1821. He had six siblings and his mother died in 1837 and his father in 1839. He graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering in 1846 but decided to change careers and become a writer. His first book, Poor Folk, did very well but on 23rd April 1849 he was arrested for subversion and sentenced to death. After a mock-execution his sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia where he developed epilepsy.He was released in 1854. His 1860 book, The House of the Dead was based on these experiences.
In 1857 he married Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. After his release he adopted more conservative and traditional values and rejected his previous socialist position. In the following years he spent a lot of time abroad, struggled with an addiction to gambling and fell deeply in debt. His wife died in 1864 and he married Anna Grigoryeva Snitkina. In the following years he published his most enduring and successful books, including Crime and Punishment (1865). He died on 9th February 1881
Industry Reviews
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
Billy Childish
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
Sally Vickers
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
Leila Aboulela, Author of The Translator
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
