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Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal "The Russian Messenger" in twelve monthly instalments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume.

It is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash.

Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless vermin. He also commits this murder to test his own hypothesis that some people are naturally capable of such things, and even have the right to do them.

Several times throughout the novel, Raskolnikov justifies his actions by comparing himself with Napoleon Bonaparte, believing that murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose. Much of the suspense of the novel is psychological, as the reader agonizes over Raskolnikov's efforts to evade justice for his crime.

Much of it is also moral, as the question of whether or not Raskolnikov himself can find redemption as a human being leads to a surprising culmination.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer and essayist. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia.

Although he began writing in the mid-1840s, his most memorable works—including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov—are from his later years. His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and three essays. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.


  1. The Essential Classics Collection : 1984; Great Expectations; The Brothers Karamazov; Pride and Prejudice; & The War of the Worlds

    George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, H.G. Wells

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  2. The Brothers Karamazov

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  3. Crime and Punishment

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  4. 50 Stories from Russia's Greatest Authors

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Aleksandr Kuprin, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Leonid Andreyev, Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Bulgakov, Nikolai Gogol

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  5. The Fyodor Dostoyevsky Collection. Signature Classics : Notes from the Underground, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, White Nights and others

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  6. 10 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol. 3

    Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary W. Shelley, Osamu Dazai, Jack London, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Robert Louis Stevenson

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  7. Crime and Punishment - Audiobook

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Classic Audiobooks

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  8. White Nights

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  9. The Idiot

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  10. 100 Masterpieces of Murder Mystery & Detective Fiction

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sinclair Lewis, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, Oscar Wilde, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, G.K. Chesterton, Wilkie Collins, Walter Scott, Daniel Defoe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Wallace, R Austin Freeman, Anna Katharine Green, Josephine Tey, Ethel Lina White, Sapper, Arthur Morrison, Marie Belloc Lowndes, John Buchan, Robert William Chambers, E. Phillips Oppenheim, J. S. Fletcher, Richard Marsh, Annie Haynes, Alexandre Dumas, Maurice Leblanc, Gaston Leroux, Émile Gaboriau, Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu, H.P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, Algernon Blackwood, Washington Irving, Guy De Maupassant, Frances Noyes Hart, Theodore Dreiser, Armitage Trail, EW Hornung, Earl Derr Biggers, S. S. van Dine, Jeffery Farnol

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  11. Crime and Punishment

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  12. Dostoevesky Notes From The Underground

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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