4.0
Crime and Punishment
ByPublisher Description
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as “the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition of Crime and Punishment has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s birth. • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME
With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel.
In Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequalled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky’s drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman’s murder into the nineteenth century’s profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.
With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel.
In Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequalled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky’s drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman’s murder into the nineteenth century’s profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesCrime and Punishment Reviews
4.0
Mina
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Nicole Dočkalíková
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Elizabeth
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“This took a painfully long time to become exciting, but then it did! So…?”
peastachiyo
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“If Raskolnikov has 0 haters, I am dead.
This piece of literature is so infuriating, raw, gut-wrenching, and horrifying. The darkness of man's psyche, the unapologetic and selfish worldviews, the horrifying crimes against women that tend to be overlooked, the stomach-churning depiction of poverty, and all the glimpses of human kindness in a cruel, cruel world. Reading this made me uncomfortable but I couldn't put it down.
It makes you think, "can an unremorseful murderer be a good person for doing acts of kindness?". I think yes, if he truly meant to do it out of the kindness of his heart, but it doesn't excuse his crimes. However, to me, Raskolnikov's moments of kindness had ulterior motives. They are calculated and transactional because he wished to be soothed, to feel better. He uses people around him, especially those who feel any sort of love and respect for him. Maybe those thoughts make him human, or a living soul that won't obey the rules of mechanics, according to his own philosophy.
Raskolnikov is far from being the genius he makes himself out to be. He's reckless, clumsy, and often acted on emotions and impulse, much like people who think too highly of themselves (lmao). He's flawed, complex, and a hypocrite, a walking contradiction.
He loathes Svidrigaïlov who uses and breaks women (especially Dounia) for his own sick pleasure, but has no problems tormenting pure-hearted Sonia to soothe his ego and remove a burden from his shoulders without judgment. To help him carry his cross, to help him feel less despicable (even though he was never remorseful).
He loathes Luzhin who uses money to buy respect from the less fortunate and even believes a poor woman makes for the best wife (because she will forever be indebted to him), but he [Raskolnikov] repeatedly uses money (not even his! It's mostly his mother's!) to buy moral high ground. To prove to those watching that he is indeed a good person, to be viewed as a savior. He also never shuts up about it.
He judges Marmeladov who had neglected his family due to alcoholism, but takes no issue in actively ignoring and even taking advantage of his own family (and Razumihin) who is always looking out for him.
I truly, truly detest Raskolnikov, but that's what makes this book a horrifyingly beautiful masterpiece.”
About Fyodor Dostoevsky
FYODOR MIKAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY's life was as dark and dramatic as the great novels he wrote. He was born in Moscow in 1821. A short first novel, Poor Folk (1846) brought him instant success, but his writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. In prison he was given the “silent treatment” for eight months (guards even wore velvet soled boots) before he was led in front a firing squad. Dressed in a death shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited execution, when suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence. He then spent four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to suffer from epilepsy, and he returned to St. Petersburg only a full ten years after he had left in chains.
His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. But it was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-69), The Possessed (1871-72),and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). When Dostoevsky died in 1881, he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.
His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. But it was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-69), The Possessed (1871-72),and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). When Dostoevsky died in 1881, he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.
Other books by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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