Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Jan. 2008 · Cosimo, Inc.

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Could an ordinary person, with no hint of malice and no motive but discovering what it feels like to do it, plot to kill and then actually murder a total stranger? What if the stranger were a thoroughly unlikable person hated by everyone who came into contact with her? One of the great novels of world literature, Crime and Punishment is a thriller of the conscience, one that wrangles with morality and its uses-or lack thereof-in the depths of poverty. Russian novelist FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) conceived the character of his putative hero, the impoverished student Raskolnikov, while he himself was struggling under the burden of massive debt, and turned his ethical dilemmas into a literary detective story of the highest order, one in which the criminal seeks to discover his own motives for his terrible deed. Renowned for its invention of a more intimate kind of third-person narration, and featuring narrative manipulations of time and memory that anticipate the works of authors such as Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, this classic novel remains essential reading for all lovers of great literature. This edition presents the acclaimed 1914 translation by English writer CONSTANCE CLARA GARNETT (1861-1946), who introduced many of the great Russian novelists to the British and American public.

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One of the most powerful and significant authors in all modern fiction, Fyodor Dostoevsky was the son of a harsh and domineering army surgeon who was murdered by his own serfs (slaves), an event that was extremely important in shaping Dostoevsky's view of social and economic issues. He studied to be an engineer and began work as a draftsman. However, his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was so well received that he abandoned engineering for writing. In 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested for being a part of a revolutionary group that owned an illegal printing press. He was sentenced to be executed, but the sentence was changed at the last minute, and he was sent to a prison camp in Siberia instead. By the time he was released in 1854, he had become a devout believer in both Christianity and Russia - although not in its ruler, the Czar. During the 1860's, Dostoevsky's personal life was in constant turmoil as the result of financial problems, a gambling addiction, and the deaths of his wife and brother. His second marriage in 1887 provided him with a stable home life and personal contentment, and during the years that followed he produced his great novels: Crime and Punishment (1886), the story of Rodya Raskolnikov, who kills two old women in the belief that he is beyond the bounds of good and evil; The Idiots (1868), the story of an epileptic who tragically affects the lives of those around him; The Possessed (1872), the story of the effect of revolutionary thought on the members of one Russian community; A Raw Youth (1875), which focuses on the disintegration and decay of family relationships and life; and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which centers on the murder of Fyodor Karamazov and the effect the murder has on each of his four sons. These works have placed Dostoevsky in the front rank of the world's great novelists. Dostoevsky was an innovator, bringing new depth and meaning to the psychological novel and combining realism and philosophical speculation in his complex studies of the human condition.