Product Description

Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder committed on principle, of a killer who wishes by his action to set himself outside and above society. A novel of fearful tension, physical, and psychological, it is pervaded by Dostoevsky's sinister evocation of St Petersburg, yet in the life of its gloomy tenements and drink-shops provides moments of wild humour. Crime and Punishment was marked by Dostoevsky's own harrowing experiences. He had himself undergone interrogation and trial, and was condemned to death, a sentence commuted to penal servitude. In prison he was particularly impressed by one hardened murderer who seemed to have attained a spiritual equilibrium beyond good and evil: yet witnessing the misery of other convicts also engendered in Dostoevsky a belief in the Christian idea of salvation through suffering.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #278070 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

About the Author
Richard Peace is Emeritus Professor of Russian at Bristol University. He is the author of Dostoevsky: An Examination of his Major Novels.

Customer Reviews

By far the BEST TRANSLATION of one of the true masterpieces
I read the Wordsworth Classics translation of Crime and Punishment when I was 16 and thought it was awful. I could not understand why this book was considered such a masterpiece. Afterwards I read the Penguin translation by David McDuff. It was much better. A good read, and I realised the importance of a good translation. Then I came across the Vintage edition by Richard Pevear. Its brilliant!! By far the best. The Penguin edition by comparison is stitled, unfluent, and the language is quite dated. Pevear's translation reads like a modern novel, and you feel the passion, the darkness, the cerebral torments of Dostoevsky's characters. Its impossible to hype this book enough. It is quite simply one of the greatest novels ever written and this translation does it justice. Most bookstores will have numerous copies of the Penguin edition. Ignore it, and get hold of the Vintage one. Its miles better!

A fine prospect
Undoubtedly this is a remarkable book and not at all what I was expecting as I first picked it up. I would recommend that the reader cast aside any preconceived ideas about this author and about the mid-Victorian era in which his story takes place, because this book really does have a very modern feel and a very accessible and easy prose and dialogue.

The reader first joins the tale as the morose, dejected down-and-out and former student Raskolnikov contemplates, and is inexorably drawn towards and fixated by the idea of, murdering an old lady pawnbroker with whom he has had business. It only becomes clear later exactly why he did so, and even then his justifications are misguided and muddled in his own mind and essentially some flight of fancy about the permissibility of any behaviour for the greater good - a means to an end, as it were.

But what is most fascinating is not the crime itself or the murderer's fate, but how his crime then comes to obsess him until he can stand it no longer and has been defeated by his own inner struggle with his conscience, which has been forever tormenting him. The dual between Porfiry Petrovich, the police investigator, and Raskolnikov and the mind games and double bluffs that are played on both sides as our antihero tries to evade detection is particularly intriguing. The suspense is palpable.

All in all this is a pretty bleak tale of suffering and a heart-rending one at that. But there is not just introspection, self-examination and 'philosophising' here, but also action, suspense, pathos and genuine sorrow in the ending, which managed to be profound without being sentimental or melodramatic.

Deep and intense
This book is a superb piece of literature, Dostoyevsky's style - intentse, vivid, compelling - draws you into the inner world of the protaganist, the introspective student Raskolnikov, as he rationalises and debates with himself, before, during and after his terrible crime. Once you are drawn into this inner realm, Dostoyevsky leads you deeper and deeper spiraling into the dark recesses of the mind.

Not only is the book multi-layered, tackling many issues: moral, judicial, cultural, social and providing an excellent expose of the human psyche, but it is a book with a page turning plot.

This combination of Dostoyevsky's prose and the issues with which he deals and the tense story line results in a compelling, gripping and absorbing read.