Crime and Punishment

About this book

Raskolnikov an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars is determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammeled individual will. When he commits an act of murder and theft he sets into motion a story that for its excruciating suspense its atmospheric vividness and its depth of characterization and vision is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevskys masterpieces Crime and Punishment can bear any amount of rereading without losing a drop of its power over our imaginations. Dostoevskys drama of sin guilt and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old womans murder into the nineteenth centurys profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.