Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment
Free DownloadFrom the Russian master of psychological characterizations, this novel portrays the carefully planned murder of a miserly, aged pawnbroker by a destitute Saint Petersburg student named Raskolnikov, followed by the emotional, mental, and physical effects of that action. Translated by Constance Garnett.
Book Excerpt
u two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it quite new at a jeweler's for a rouble and a half."
"Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father's. I shall be getting some money soon."
"A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!"
"A rouble and a half!" cried the young man.
"Please yourself"--and the old woman handed him back the watch. The young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere else he could go, and that he had had another object also in coming.
"Hand it over," he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers.
"It must be the top drawer," he reflected. "So she carries the keys in a pocket on the right
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Not for every reader, this book has some long monologues. However, the complex characters provide philosophical insight and it's very interesting to see Russia in the 1860's. Besides the plotline of murder, there are other issues of family, society, desire, loathing, and pure humanity. I was so immersed at some points that I completely lost touch with my actual surroundings. If you aren't feeling captivated by this book, you might put it down and try it at another point in your life. This is a great book.
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I read this book in my late teens and was stunned by it. Some of the scenes are still fresh in my mind years later. Rask's growing madness, the poverty which is never dwelt on but always present, the torment of the characters, their desperate lives, and the emotion that runs through the whole thing like electricity ... there is so much of life in this old book, and I think almost everyone knows the plot by now. A very deep book, and not something to take with you on the beach! One minor point though, re-reading the book today, it seems a little baggy in places, like his other great works, and could benefit from some modern judicial editing maybe. I tried reading his other works (The Idiot etc.) but none of them quite did it for me the way this book did.
This is his masterpiece.
This is his masterpiece.
04/18/2006
Great Book
11/29/2005
