Crime and Punishment (AmazonClassics Edition) - Softcover

Living in a squalid room in St. Petersburg, the indigent but proud Rodion Raskolnikov believes he is above society. Obsessed with the idea of breaking the law, Raskolnikov resolves to kill an old pawnbroker for her cash.

Although the murder and robbery are bungled, Raskolnikov manages to escape without being seen. And with nothing to prove his guilt and a mendacious confessor in police custody, Raskolnikov seems to have committed the perfect crime. But in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s world of moral transgressions, with its reason and its consequences, Raskolnikov’s plan has a devastating hitch: the feverish delirium of his own conscience.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Born in Moscow, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, translator, essayist, journalist, and philosopher, regarded today as one of the most significant writers of the Golden Age of Russian Literature.

Raised with an appreciation for books, Dostoyevsky developed a desire to write at an early age. His first novel, Poor Folk, gained him entry into literary circles, but his interest in the banned books of tsarist Russia landed the young author in a Siberian prison camp for four years. It helped to instill in Dostoyevsky themes of desperation, suicide, poverty, manipulation, crime, and morality that would inform his novels.