Google Preview

• 2 of 2 people find this helpful

  • Constance Garrett was a horrible translator. It's a shame to ruin such a great novel by reading such an awful translation from Garrett. To enjoy this book, please please please (!!) read the text as translated by another source. The Pevear / Volokhonsky Translation is much closer to the original. ... Continue

    Constance Garrett was a horrible translator. It's a shame to ruin such a great novel by reading such an awful translation from Garrett. To enjoy this book, please please please (!!) read the text as translated by another source. The Pevear / Volokhonsky Translation is much closer to the original.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― repertoire said on Nov 11, 2007 about the Mass Market Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • I simply could not get into this one.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― baftaboo said on Apr 11, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • 

  • This is easily my favorite work of Dostoevksy's. I loved The Brothers Karamazov, but this is a shorter, equally compelling version. The story moves, in ways that are slow and subtle and these subtle motions build up all the momentum that's released in an amazing ending. This is a book that really ou ... Continue

    This is easily my favorite work of Dostoevksy's. I loved The Brothers Karamazov, but this is a shorter, equally compelling version. The story moves, in ways that are slow and subtle and these subtle motions build up all the momentum that's released in an amazing ending. This is a book that really ought to be required reading.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Alex Richardson said on Apr 10, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • Best Book Ever

  • This is the best novel I ever read. There is no greater piece of literature.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Math Geek said on Mar 22, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • Memorable.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Leebeck said on Feb 28, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • xx, 564 p. ; 21 cm.1st Vintage classics ed

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Brian Hamilton said on May 7, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder.
From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime.
The result is a tragic novel built out of a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world's harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, commits a random murder without remorse or regret, imagining himself to be a great man far above moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with a suspicious police investigator, his own conscience begins to torment him and he seeks sympathy and redemption from Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute.

Groups with this in collection

Best 100 books ever, according to 100 contemporary authors (13)

The Novel 100 (25)

Fyodor Dostoevsky (44)

Historical Fiction Lovers (121)

• RussiafictionredemptionRussian literaturetruth and liessiblingspsychological fictionclassicsreligionmental health/mental illness
• See all (30)