Staff Pick
This is one of the finest explorations of criminal psychology ever written. With enormous scope, Dostoyevsky dissects poverty, rationalization, the criminal mind, guilt, confession, religion, and redemption. He also provides an exquisite look at overwhelming paranoia. Crime and Punishment is a perfect, breathtaking masterpiece. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
It is a murder story, told from a murder;s point of view, that implicates even the most innocent reader in its enormities. It is a cat-and-mouse game between a tormented young killer and a cheerfully implacable detective. It is a preternaturally acute investigation of the forces that impel a man toward sin, suffering, and grace.
Ever since its publication in 1866 Crime and Punishment has intrigued readers and sorely tested translators, the best of whom seemed to capture one facet of Dostoevsky's masterpiece while missing the rest. Now Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky render this elusive and wildly innovative novel with an energy, suppleness, and range of voice that do full justice to the genius of its creator.
Review
"Reaches as close to Dostoevsky's Russian as is possible in English...the original's force and frightening immediacy is captured....The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation will become the standard English version." Chicago Tribune
Review
"This fresh, new translation...provides a more exact, idiomatic and contemporary rendition of the novel that brings Fydor Dostoevsky's tale achingly alive....It succeeds beautifully." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"For my classics year project, I knew I had to get some Dostoevsky in. I crossed The Idiot off the list for the shallow reason that I have the DVD of Akira Kurosawa's version. That left either Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov. A used copy of Crime and Punishment showed up first, so it won. I was a little apprehensive, though, as my mom had recently read another Dostoevsky and found it very Christian, and another person had specifically mentioned Crime and Punishment as a Christian book. However, while Christianity was mentioned, it never rose to a level in the book to cause an atheist to fidget (as opposed to Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, which I found eye-rollingly unreadable due to sermonizing)." Doug Brown, Powells.com (Read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Pevear and Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's classic novel that presents a clear insight into this astounding psychological thriller. "The best (translation) currently available"--Washington Post Book World.
Synopsis
2021 BICENTENNIAL EDITION WITH NEWLY REVISED TRANSLATION Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read
With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Pevear and Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's classic novel that presents a clear insight into this astounding psychological thriller. The Washington Post Book World hailed their translation as The best currently availatble when it was first published, and they have now updated it in this second edition in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostevsky's birth.
Synopsis
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as "the best translation] currently available when it was first published, this second edition has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky's birth. With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel.
When Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequalled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky's drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman's murder into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.
Synopsis
With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Pevear and Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's classic novel that presents a clear insight into this astounding psychological thriller. "The best (translation) currently available"--Washington Post Book World.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [553]-564).