"One death, in exchange for thousands of lives - it's simple arithmetic!"

A new translation of Dostoevsky's epic masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1866). The impoverished student Raskolnikov decides to free himself from debt by killing an old moneylender, an act he sees as elevating himself above conventional morality. Like Napoleon he will assert his will and his crime will be justified by its elimination of "vermin" for the sake of the greater good. But Raskolnikov is torn apart by fear, guilt, and a growing conscience under the influence of his love for Sonya. Meanwhile the police detective Porfiry is on his trail. It is a powerfully psychological novel, in which the St Petersburg setting, Dostoevsky's own circumstances, and contemporary social problems all play their part.

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Features

• A major new translation of Dostoyevsky's enduring classic by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, with editorial material by the UK's leading Dostoevsky expert, Dr Sarah J. Young
• Gives a brief biographical sketch of Dostoevsky, focusing on aspects of his life most pertinent to the writing of Crime and Punishment--his experience of prison and the criminals he met there, and his money troubles in the 1860s when he was working on the novel
• Provides an assessment of critical trends and approaches to the novel, detailing the literary and historical context, with emphasis on the Petersburg setting as a literary theme and a contemporary social context
• Notes elucidate potentially obscure references in the text, and also connect the novel to the wider context of Dostoevsky's writing and 19th-century Russian culture, citing other classics of Russian literature and accessible secondary works

ABOUT THE SERIES

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Introduction
Dostoevsky’s Life
St Petersburg: Literary and Social Contexts
Motives for Murder: The Ideological Context
The Divided Self
Doubles
‘Realism in a Higher Sense’
Note on the Translation
Note on the Table of Ranks
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Fyodor Dostoevsky
Map
Other
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
List of Principal Characters
Explanatory Notes

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Nicolas Pasternak Slater has translated several works by Boris Pasternak, most recently The Family Correspondence, 1921-1960 (Hoover Press, 2010). For Oxford World's Classics, he has translated Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (2013) and Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (2015).

Sarah J. Young is Senior Lecturer in Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, where she teaches and researches nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, culture, and thought. She is the author of Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative (Anthem Press, 2004), and co-editor of Dostoevsky on the Threshold of Other Worlds (Bramcote Press, 2006).

"Stylistic precision and neatness are qualities of Slater's translation... This is an ideal edition to prescribe for senior high school and undergraduate teaching... Young's Introduction lays a good foundation for readers who are new to Dostoevsky, and neatly covers all the major aspects of the novel in its historical context, within the editorial constraints of a translation." - Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, Australian Book Review

"Superb... the Oxford University Press edition is beautifully produced and competitively priced." - Donald Rayfield, Times Literary Supplement