CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Crime and Punishment, novel by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1866. His first masterpiece, the novel is a psychological analysis of the poor former student Raskolnikov, whose theory that he is an extraordinary person capable of taking spiritual responsibility for using evil means to achieve humanitarian ends leads him to murder. The act produces in Raskolnikov a nightmarish sense of guilt. The story is one of the best studies of the psychopathology of guilt written in any language.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was one of the leading writers of Tsarist Russia, whose literature explores human psychology in the complex political, social and spiritual context of Russian society in the second half of the 19th century.