Crime and Punishment

One death, in exchange for thousands of lives - it's simple arithmetic! This is a new translation of Dostoevsky's epic masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1866) by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, with editorial material by the UK's leading Dostoevsky expert, Dr Sarah J. Young.

The impoverished student Raskolnikov decides to free himself from debt by killing an old moneylender, an act he sees as elevating himself above conventional morality. Like Napoleon, he will assert his will, and his crime will be justified by its elimination of 'vermin' for the sake of the greater good. However, Raskolnikov is torn apart by fear, guilt, and a growing conscience under the influence of his love for Sonya. Meanwhile, the police detective Porfiry is on his trail. It is a powerfully psychological novel, in which the St Petersburg setting, Dostoevsky's own circumstances, and contemporary social problems all play their part.

Features

• A major new translation of Dostoevsky's enduring classic by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, with editorial material by the UK's leading Dostoevsky expert, Dr Sarah J. Young.
• Gives a brief biographical sketch of Dostoevsky, focusing on aspects of his life most pertinent to the writing of Crime and Punishment—his experience of prison and the criminals he met there, and his money troubles in the 1860s when he was working on the novel.
• Provides an assessment of critical trends and approaches to the novel, detailing the literary and historical context, with emphasis on the Petersburg setting as a literary theme and a contemporary social context.
• Notes elucidate potentially obscure references in the text, and also connect the novel to the wider context of Dostoevsky's writing and 19th-century Russian culture, citing other classics of Russian literature and accessible secondary works.

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