Crime and Punishment

About the book

Could an ordinary person, with no hint of malice and no motive but discovering what it feels like to do it, plot to kill and then actually murder a total stranger? What if the stranger were a thoroughly unlikable person hated by everyone who came into contact with her? One of the great novels of world literature, Crime and Punishment is a thriller of the conscience, one that wrangles with morality and its uses-or lack thereof-in the depths of poverty. Russian novelist FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) conceived the character of his putative hero, the impoverished student Raskolnikov, while he himself was struggling under the burden of massive debt, and turned his ethical dilemmas into a literary detective story of the highest order, one in which the criminal seeks to discover his own motives for his terrible deed. Renowned for its invention of a more intimate kind of third-person narration, and featuring narrative manipulations of time and memory that anticipate the works of authors such as Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, this classic novel remains essential reading for all lovers of great literature. This edition presents the acclaimed 1914 translation by English writer CONSTANCE CLARA GARNETT (1861-1946), who introduced many of the great Russian novelists to the British and American public.