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Crime And PunishmentStock informationGeneral Fields
Special Fields
Description'The old woman was merely a sickness . . .it wasn't a human being I killed, it was a principle!' Crime and Punishment is probably Dostoevsky's most read and known novel and one of the most famous literary works of all time. Published in instalments in 1866 in the journal Russkij vestnik (The Russian Messenger), it is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, which the author describes in a letter to the editor: "A young man, expelled from university, of a petty bourgeois family, very poor, decides to suddenly emerge from his sad situation. Raskolnikov divides men into two species: the great men, the "Napoleons", which are allowed to live and act above the moral law and to which, in the name of their greatness and the benefit that humanity draws from their existence, "everything is allowed"; the common people, the "lice", which must instead be subject to laws and common sense, and against which the Napoleons have the right to life and death." "Many consider Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky's finest masterpiece; of his novels, it is certainly the one that would profit most from an exact and well-informed translation, locating its 'newspaper' atmosphere in appropriate contemporary speech. This is has now received from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who also provide illuminating notes. They are to be congratulated on an outstanding achievement." AwardsRunner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Shortlisted for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. |