Recommended by Arun Burman
Crime and Punishment was one of the first novels in history to combine profound, pressing philosophical questions with a murder plot more commonly associated with popular fiction than classical literature. The novel lifted Dostoyevsky’s reputation as both a psychological and philosophical novelist, and exerts an influence in Russia comparable to Shakespeare’s within Britain. Its philosophical ideas and psychological insight have pervaded literature ever since.
The story follows an obstinate and struggling student named Rodion Raskolnikov who has sunk into an abject depression, underneath the portentous St Petersburg sky. After selling his valuables to a curmudgeonly and supercilious pawnbroker, he develops an inexorable urge to rob and murder her. Perhaps unexpectedly, the murder is merely the premise of the novel, and it is Raskolnikov’s gradual descent into guilt, penitence and madness that the majority of the book is comprised of.
