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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Paperback book

Crime and Punishment

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

  • ISBN: 9780141192802
  • Published: 2014-04-23
  • Binding: Paperback

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Book Description:

'Will I really - I mean, really - actually take an axe, start hitting her on the head, smash her skull to pieces . . . Will I slip in warm sticky blood, break the lock, steal and tremble; and hide, all drenched in blood . . . with an axe . . . Lord, will I really?'

This new translation of Dostoyevsky's 'psychological record of a crime' gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before.

Review by John Purcell

On a bad day, the choice Rasholnikov, the anti-hero of Crime and Punishment, makes, doesn't seem too terrible. Monday morning, say, as the alarm goes off at a quarter to six, it's still dark outside, it's raining and the working week stretches out long and dull before me.

I mean, I too could be the next Napoleon, the next Kanye, given the chance. All I really need is a bit of a start - a windfall to buy me some time to think and to prepare. I'm not a bad man; I'm just caught in the shoddy circumstances I was born into. I could be a great man given the chance. I could do great things.

I just need the money to free me from my treadmill.

Look, that rich old lady over there hasn't done anything for anybody. Nobody will miss her. With her out of the way, and the money in my pocket, I am free to change the world for the better. Humanity gets a good deal, really. Right?

About the Author

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the second of a physician's seven children. His mother died in 1837 and his father was murdered a little over two years later. When he left his private boarding school in Moscow he studied from 1838 to 1843 at the Military Engineering College in St Petersburg, graduating with officer's rank. His first story to be published, 'Poor Folk' (1846), was a great success.

In 1849 he was arrested and sentenced to death for participating in the 'Petrashevsky circle'; he was reprieved at the last moment but sentenced to penal servitude, and until 1854 he lived in a convict prison at Omsk, Siberia. In the decade following his return from exile he wrote The Village of Stepanchikovo (1859) and The House of the Dead (1860). Whereas the latter draws heavily on his experiences in prison, the former inhabits a completely different world, shot through with comedy and satire.

In 1861 he began the review Vremya (Time) with his brother; in 1862 and 1863 he went abroad, where he strengthened his anti-European outlook, met Mlle Suslova, who was the model for many of his heroines, and gave way to his passion for gambling. In the following years he fell deeply in debt, but in 1867 he married Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina (his second wife), who helped to rescue him from his financial morass. They lived abroad for four years, then in 1873 he was invited to edit Grazhdanin (The Citizen), to which he contributed his Diary of a Writer.

From 1876 the latter was issued separately and had a large circulation. In 1880 he delivered his famous address at the unveiling of Pushkin's memorial in Moscow; he died six months later in 1881. Most of his important works were written after 1864: Notes from Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1865-6), The Gambler (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Devils (1871) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

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Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

By Fyodor Dostoevsky Paperback
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