Crime and Punishment - Softcover

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1605205109 ISBN 13: 9781605205106

Publisher: Cosimo Inc, 2008

Synopsis

Could an ordinary person, with no hint of malice and no motive but discovering what it feels like to do it, plot to kill and then actually murder a total stranger? What if the stranger were a thoroughly unlikable person hated by everyone who came into contact with her? One of the great novels of world literature, Crime and Punishment is a thriller of the conscience, one that wrangles with morality and its uses-or lack thereof-in the depths of poverty. Russian novelist FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) conceived the character of his putative hero, the impoverished student Raskolnikov, while he himself was struggling under the burden of massive debt, and turned his ethical dilemmas into a literary detective story of the highest order, one in which the criminal seeks to discover his own motives for his terrible deed. Renowned for its invention of a more intimate kind of third-person narration, and featuring narrative manipulations of time and memory that anticipate the works of authors such as Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, this classic novel remains essential reading for all lovers of great literature. This edition presents the acclaimed 1914 translation by English writer CONSTANCE CLARA GARNETT (1861-1946), who introduced many of the great Russian novelists to the British and American public.

About this title

Review:

Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Dostoyevsky's penetrating novel of an intellectual whose moral compass goes haywire, and the detective who hunts him down for his terrible crime, is a stunning psychological portrait, a thriller and a profound meditation on guilt and retribution.

From the Publisher:

"Dostoevsky conceived the idea of Crime and Punishment in the summer of 1865, having lost all his money at the casino, unable to pay his bill or afford proper meals. At the time the author owed large sums of money to creditors, and he was trying to help the family of his brother Mikhail, who had died in early 1864. Projected under the title The Drunkards, it was to deal "with the present question of drunkness ... [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstance, etc., etc." Once Dostoevsky conceived Raskolnikov and his crime, now inspired by the case of Pierre François Lacenaire, this theme became ancillary, centering on the story of the Marmeladov family.

Dostoevsky offered his story or novella (at the time Dostoevsky was not thinking of a novel) to the publisher Mikhail Katkov. His monthly journal, The Russian Messenger, was a prestigious publication of its kind, and the outlet for both Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy, but Dostoevsky, having carried on quite bruising polemics with Katkov in early 1860s, had never published anything in its pages. Dostoevsky turned as a last resort to Katkov, and asked for an advance on a proposed contribution after all other appeals elsewhere failed. In a letter to Katkov written in September 1865, Dostoevsky explained to him that the work was to be about a young man who yields to "certain strange, 'unfinished' ideas, yes floating in the air"; he had thus embarked on his plan to explore the moral and psychological dangers of the "radical" ideology. In letters written in November 1865 an important conceptual change occurred: the "story" has become a "novel", and from here on all references to Crime and Punishment are to a novel.

Dostoevsky had to race against time, in order to finish on time both The Gambler and Crime and Punishment. Anna Snitkina, a stenographer who would soon become his second wife, was a great help for Dostoevsky during this difficult task. The first part of Crime and Punishment appeared in the January 1866 issue of The Russian Messenger, and the last one was published in December 1866." - Wikipedia

About this edition

• Publisher: Cosimo Inc
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1605205109
• ISBN 13: 9781605205106
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 532