Crime and Punishment (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

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In Dostoevsky’s great Russian classic, a murder sparks a battle for one man’s soul.

Consumed by the idea of his own special destiny, and immured in poverty and deprivation, Raskolnikov is drawn to commit a terrible crime.

In the aftermath, he is dogged by madness, guilt and a calculating detective. What begins as an act of self-justification becomes a feverish struggle with conscience, suspicion and fear. The only hope for redemption, if Raskolnikov can recognise it, lies in the virtuous and faithful Sonya.

Crime and Punishment is a classic Russian novel about guilt, poverty, morality and the divided self. Dostoevsky turns a story of murder into a profound psychological and philosophical drama, following one man through torment, pride and the possibility of grace. It remains essential reading for anyone interested in Russian classics and moral conflict.

TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

VINTAGE CLASSICS RUSSIAN SERIES: sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.

'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

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

About Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. His debut, the epistolary novella Poor Folk (1846), made his name. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with the politically subversive 'Petrashevsky circle' and until 1854 he lived in a convict prison in Omsk, Siberia. From this experience came The House of the Dead (1860-2). In 1860 he began the journal Vremya (Time). Already married, he fell in love with one of his contributors, Appollinaria Suslova, eighteen years his junior, and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. After the death of his first wife, Maria, in 1864, Dostoyevsky completed Notes from Underground and began work towards Crime and Punishment (1866). The major novels of his late period are The Idiot (1868), Demons (1871-2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He died in 1881.

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