‘A detective novel, a religious epic, a study in criminal psychopathology ...

‘An indictment of urban social conditions in nineteenth-century Russia, and a proto-Nietzschean analysis of the “will to power” ... Crime and Punishment is all these things — but it is more,’ writes David McDuff in the introduction to this new translation.

Crime and Punishment tells how Raskolnikov, a former student, murders an old woman money-lender and her unfortunate sister. From the beginning Dostoyevsky attaches us unreservedly to his hero, drawing us into the dreams of the criminal soul, unfolding the rank processes of guilt in an atmosphere of almost unbearable tension and terror. The result is a tragic masterpiece, a profound drama of redemption and, according to the critic John Jones, ‘the most accessible and exciting novel in the world’.