Crime and Punishment

About this book

Dostoevsky's 1866 novel, read here in a classic public-domain English translation. In the heat of St Petersburg, the poor former student Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker, convinced that an exceptional man stands above ordinary morality. The rest of the book follows the pressure of guilt, the patient questioning of the investigator Porfiry, and his relationship with Sonia. It is a founding work of the psychological novel and a sustained argument about conscience, poverty and redemption.