Crime and Punishment

About the book

Raskolnikov lives in poverty in St Petersburg, increasingly absorbed by an argument about whether exceptional people may cross ordinary moral boundaries. A violent act turns that private theory into consequences he cannot keep at an intellectual distance. Dostoevsky follows feverish changes of thought, tense conversations, chance encounters, and relationships that alternately draw the young man towards others and deepen his isolation. The investigation is psychological as well as official: motives shift whenever someone tries to name them. Family sacrifice, material need, pride, and compassion complicate any simple explanation of conduct. The novel makes abstract reasoning feel physically and emotionally urgent, asking what happens when a person attempts to live as though an idea could release him from responsibility to other human beings.

• Guilt
• Ideas and responsibility
• Isolation

Why read it

For the intensity with which thought, conversation, and suspense become parts of the same moral struggle.

Constance Garnett translation · English text