Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky

I first read Crime and Punishment in 1988 in the Penguin Classics edition that was available at the time by David Magarshak. It must have been done in the 1960s but it read well and it made Crime and Punishment my favourite novel alongside Kafka’s The Trial. Penguin went on to publish a newer translation by David McDuff in the 1990s but that passed me by. I stuck with my old edition, which I’ve now read several times. I decided to read this edition by Oliver Ready for two reasons. First, my old edition is in a box somewhere in my storage unit and I’ve no idea where it is. Second, I heard Oliver Ready talking about his translation on the radio a few months ago, and I thought I would give him a chance. I will get my pedantry out of the way early. A translator has no business using poor grammar, no matter what the original text might be doing, so, please, no more “sat” where we should have “sitting” and no more “there’s” where we should have “there are”. These horrors may have crept into the vernacular, but there is no need to spoil a literary text with sloppy grammar. Having said that, the translation on the whole does justice to a fantastic novel in that it “feels” like Dostoyevsky. Oliver Ready provides a very good introduction setting out key aspects of the author’s life that helped produce the novel, and the all-important political and cultural environment of Russia in the 1860s that led to all these “new ideas” that Luzhin tries to acquaint himself with. The translator also provides many useful notes explaining the geography of Petersburg and illuminating various topical references. These alone make this translation worthwhile. When I think about my favourite writers, I find that most of them suffered in some way. In Dostoyevsky’s case, he lost his mother at 15, then his father was murdered by one of his serfs a couple of years later. Dostoyevsky was arrested for being a member of a liberal discussion group and he knew what it’s like to stand in front of a firing squad believing that in a few moments you’re going to be shot. He was reprieved at the last moment but then endured years of forced labour in Siberia, loaded with chains and manacles. I’m not saying anything about the plot because either you know it or you don’t; and if you don’t know it, you ought to find out. I’m not in the habit of pestering people to read works by dead white males, but this is one book I would urge anyone to read.

I hesitate to review Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” as there are plenty of reviews and commentaries out there by people who know much more about the book than I ever will. But humility has never been my strongest point, so here are a few thoughts. It is, of course, a masterpiece, and I can’t imagine giving it anything other than five stars. We spend most of it in the head of Raskolnikov, whose terrible flaws we know all too well (spoiler alert – he’s a murderer), but we are drawn to him and, though we witness his crime in all its horror, we can’t help but hope the punishment will not be too severe. Other characters are equally complex. All of the men have their flaws, but with perhaps one exception, they all have their virtues too. With the women, I felt that Dostoyevsky’s characterisations weren’t quite so rounded. Sonya, in particular, seemed a bit too good to be true. In the twentieth century, the prostitute with a heart of gold became a familiar trope in certain genres, but I can imagine that it was perhaps daring or even (Dostoyevsky wouldn’t like this word) progressive to paint such a sympathetic portrait of a prostitute in the 1860s. Sonya is a girl from the minor nobility reduced to selling her body thanks to her useless drunk of a father and her cruel stepmother. The shame both felt by her and imposed on her by others is painted skilfully, but I would imagine her to be angry at such a loss of status and find nothing of that in the text. Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya is more complex, but again, I find her a bit too good to be true. If the young women are placed on a pedestal, the older women are quite ridiculous, sometimes hilariously so. Dostoyevsky’s satire of the snobbery of lesser aristocratic women reduced to utter destitution is merciless. As a comfortably-off middle-class Brit, I found the extreme poverty endured by most of the high-class characters in the book quite startling. Like any book, this one is of its time. There is a smattering of anti-Semitism, unfortunately. Some of the chapters are a bit too long for modern tastes, and I can imagine a twenty-first century editor complaining that a lot of the dialogue doesn’t sound natural and needs to be cut. This editor might also scrawl in the margin, “You didn’t get the show-not-tell memo, did you?” (There is plenty of showing but an awful lot of telling. He seems to have got away with it, though.) The book is highly ideological, but I enjoyed it despite the fact that I don’t subscribe to the conservative and Christian outlook Dostoyevsky is promoting. He skewers atheistic utopian socialists quite brilliantly, but his main target is the kind of amoral hyper-individualism that today we associate with the likes of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. Here, I have a great deal of sympathy with his critique, even if I come at it from a more liberal humanist bent.

Came in perfect condition

As is too widely known to be a spoiler, Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student living in the teeming squalor of 1860s St Petersburg, convinces himself that, as men like Napoleon are revered despite the large amount of bloodshed they have caused, he would be morally justified in murdering an unpleasant old money-lender and stealing from her to pay for his education, to relieve his mother and sister of the burden of supporting him and to spend on deserving needy people and good causes. Needless to say, he botches both the murder and the theft, only to be haunted by violent flashbacks and delusions together with the fear of being caught, compounded by his compulsion to confess his crime to others, not out of remorse, but in disgust over his failure as a self-defined “superior” being to carry out the plan effectively. Immature and arrogant, his mind addled by reading too many theories, Raskolnikov is not easy to like. Apart from being an in-depth “psychological record of a crime” which must have been ground-breaking when first published in instalments in 1868 , this novel is also an indictment of appalling social conditions, more hard-hitting even than Dickens. It continually slips into farcical parodies of the social attitudes and beliefs of the day, including the dissent to which Dostoevsky himself was drawn as a youth. Raskolnikov's very name means "dissenter" - from the "normal" way of seeing the world. A recurring theme is the arbitrary, contradictory nature of morality itself. For instance, Raskolnikov is appalled by the debauched behaviour of Arkady Svidrigailov, who has designs on his sister, but this rogue uses the money obtained from the wife he himself may have murdered, to provide substantial help for a number of needy people, something which Raskolnikov has failed to achieve. Raskolnikov’s “dead soul” is ultimately brought to life by the love of the almost saintly Sonya, who nevertheless consented to work as a prostitute to support her penniless family. I was initially disappointed by the novel’s style which seems quite stilted and artificial. Yet lengthy monologues to provide an “information dump” or develop an argument were a feature of C19 novels. I could understand that Raskolnikov’s “stream of consciousness rants” might be justified as conveying a sense of his mental confusion and agitation. Yet other characters indulge in them as well, perhaps because the male characters are often drunk and the women hysterical and overwrought. Finding it hard to decide how much my dissatisfaction was due to the shortcomings of the translation, I tried four, ending with the widely praised Penguin translation by Oliver Ready, and thought that Constant Garnett’s early version also looks good , yet all of them jarred or seemed unnatural at times. This made me wonder whether the challenge of translating into another language, even the vastly flexible and nuanced English, from Russian without losing too much of its essence is just too great. It’s a matter of taste, but despite grasping the ideas Dostoevsky was seeking to develop, I find the work over-emotional, and too filled with jumbled thoughts of the type one might have in reality, but seek a writer who can unravel them. Bleaker and edgier, less sentimental than Dickens, it is on a higher plane of complexity. I agree with a reviewer who liked the beginning and end the best. The opening part leading to the dreadful crime is focused, the writing in the epilogue has been described as “delicate” and is marked by a clarity and lucidity like the calm after a storm. In-between is a morass of digressions and ramblings punctuated by a few strong scenes of high drama or tension such as when the cunning Chief Investigator Porfiry Petrovich is playing a cat-and-mouse psychological game with the overwrought Raskolnikov, which would not be amiss in a modern detective yarn, or the confrontation near the end between Raskolnikov’s sister Avdotya, who shows a lot more sense than he does, and the manipulative villain Svidrigailov whose one true emotion is his love for her. What interests me most about the novel is the extent to which it reflects the life of the author himself and the history of the period. I am sure that the more one knows about this, the greater one’s appreciation of the book. Dostoevsky must have been influenced through being sentenced to death by firing squad as a young man for some, to our minds, relatively minor revolt against the censorship of the day, only to be reprieved literally at the last minute, subsequently serving five years hard labour in a Siberian prison. This should probably be read at least twice: the first time on a wave of momentum to see what happens, the second time more slowly, checking on, say, the copious notes accompanying the Oliver Ready translation.

Flaws: A lot of characters, some with similar and complex names that you can mix up/forget. A dense read with fairly intense subject matter. Can be a little hard to get through at times. Pros: Well worth every bit of difficulty to read. This book is like a time machine into 1860's Russia. The density is so engrossing - the first book I've really read that had this kind of density that was so rewarding and genuinely captivating. It's a life changing book, at least for myself. The moral, philosophical, emotional, spiritual, psychology, societal, political implications of this book are so tangible, to read it was an enlightening experience. It's a very special book, would recommend to anybody who is seeking deeper knowledge and understanding of the world, humanity, the human condition, and even life, really. A masterpiece.

I saw a dramatic versioning the novel fairly recently and decided to read the book - well read in English translation. It was a gripping experience which combined outer and inner places. The notes explained much which was mysterious. Russia is enigmatic, and so are many Russians in my experience. This book immerses one in the Russian experience; it is philosophical, psychological and even theological. It ends with an intimation of redemption. It is infinitely more than a clever crime novel!

I read this book in an earlier translation a long time ago. This one is amazing to read. The translator seems to have done everything he can without altering the text (although I don't speak or read Russian so I can't say for sure) over much to make this incredibly readable. It was readable before, but now it's eminently readable! Well worth the time it takes to get through a long book like this.

Obviously a well deserved classic but also an excellent translation. Retaining the quality of language but also giving it a lively and accessible feel. A long and intimidating book made very readable. Worth spending the extra for a more contemporary translation. The other Penguin Classics translation is also very good but just don't go for one of the cheap/free ones. I tried years ago and just gave up, not something I often do.

A fine translation. Raskolnikov wants to be an ubermensch, "to be a man, not a louse," yet ironically molds himself after Napoleon - willing to sacrifice OTHERS for his own purposes, and thus making himself less like a human and more like a parasite - that lives off the blood of others. My only minor beef with the edition I have is the cover art - although it is super cool, Raskolnikov is pictured as a scary crusty older guy, while in the book he is young, attractive, and yes, disturbed. (This review was written for the "Oliver Ready" translation - I don't know but perhaps should assume that when it shows up under the audiobook narrated by Nigel Anthony, that it is the same translation. There's no indication - does anyone know?

Quick disclaimer: I am a completely novice reader and this is actually the first book I have willingly decided to purchase and read, and therefore all the opinions below are through that lens. The quality of the book is great, pages are a bit thin but not too thin, I think they are just right. The cover is also really cool- I think from all the versions of this book I have seen online, this is one of the best looking ones. The translation is also very solid, I read Garnett’s version before this and it took me a few chapters to get used to. I have also heard that this translation (by Oliver Ready) is one of the best for English readers who want something close to the original Russian book. In my opinion that checks out because it is very easy to digest. Also, what I really like, is that there is a thorough explanation for uncommon words or phrases that might not make sense at first, at the end of the book, containing insightful and helpful information that you might not find by just googling. I have no idea if this is standard for all books like this, but that’s a pro of this book that you can keep in mind. The text is also the perfect size, not too big and not too small. Anyway, I think this book is totally worth it.

I think everyone who is buying such a book knows what the content is and talking about the book, is printed clearly. Everything as expected.

Clássico russo que todos os psiquiatras deveriam ler

great pricing.