Crime and Punishment: A New Translation
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as "the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition of Crime and Punishment has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky's birth. With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel. In Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequalled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky's drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman's murder into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.
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Community Reviews
Another case of reading a book "because it's a classic" (whatever that means) and then being very pleasantly surprised to find that it's just a damn good novel with timeless insights into humanity.
Lots of good work on character development all round, but my favourite by far is Petrovich. Something about his calm, calculating instincts matched with piercing emotional intelligence that I really latched onto.
While I'm sure a good English professor would say that I missed much of Dostoyevsky's intent, the narratives around justifying crimes in one's mind, in the name of the greater good of humanity were insightful and sat well with me. Raskolnikov's inner struggles were easy to relate to, without going all the way to a flat out Faulkner / Wolf stream of consciousness narration.
Loved the book. Unlike Don Quixote, the length was well used and never left me wanting it to end sooner.
Amazing, intriguing, engaging. You are immediately sucked into the story from page one; the portrayal of Raskolnikovs mental deterioration, Sonias unshakable compassion and purity, and most of all the portrayal of morality, alienation, and the necessity of suffering is unparalleled. One of the best books ever written!
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