Crime and Punishment

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Fyodor Dostoevsky

Literature

Aug 1, 2018

Is life unfair? Is circumstance fate? Can we ever take the law into our own hands to change it? Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first major novel poses these questions in the tale of a man who enacts brutal crimes in order to break the strictures of his social destiny. For Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the handsome but penniless “ex-student” at the center of Crime and Punishment, the Saint Petersburg of the 1860s is a cesspit of nepotists and shysters. He convinces himself it would be no worse off without a certain greedy pawnbroker; it might even be a better place if she were eliminated. Of all the big, fat Russian novels of the nineteenth century, this one may be the most accessible—and the questions it poses about our desires and responsibilities remain as fresh as ever.

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DeAnn Rossetti

Oct 28, 2018

My best friend in college loved Dostoyevsky, probably because she came from a very impoverished background, and felt a kinship with him. I didn't, and felt that this tale was painful and too bleak

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