There are novels that would need no introduction. As soon as we begin to read them, from the very first pages they project us into a life unthinkable for us a few moments before, in which we nevertheless orient ourselves with wonder. Crime and Punishment is one such novel, a work of searing relevance, in which Dostoevsky was able to capture the echoes of our culture. Reading this novel, the reader is immediately reminded of the blank, dull look of so many 'heroes' of our crime news, the ominous voice of the God of Genesis shouting to Cain echoes in your head: Cain, what have you done? Now you are cursed from the earth, you will be a wanderer and a vagabond. And you wonder: what if it had been me?
Crime and punishment is a decisive novel for subsequent twentieth-century fiction, for the psychological excavation of the characters and the ferocity of the emotional analysis.
