Crime and Punishment

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'Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?'

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov – an impoverished student drop-out and amateur philosopher – callously murders a pawnbroker in the slums of St Petersburg. Pursued by the law and his own ravaged conscience, Dostoyevsky’s iconic anti-hero spirals into crisis as the noose tightens, and everything he thought he knew about morality and sin is corrupted by his hideous act of violence.

In this psychological masterpiece of good and evil, Dostoyevsky questions what murder does to the soul and whether redemption is possible. One of the great works of world literature, Crime and Punishment is an epic of human nature, guilt and salvation.

About the Author

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821– 1881) was a Russian author and journalist whose novels, short stories and essays explore religious, philosophical and political aspects of the human condition, and are considered by many to be the most influential writing of the modern world, including his novella Notes from Underground, one of the earliest Existential texts. He spent a decade in the Tsarist penal system for reading banned books, including four years in a Siberian prison camp, but survived to become one of the most famous and highly regarded world writers.