Crime and Punishment

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Note: I read the Penguin Classics version (as pictured on blog post cover). I personally thought the translation was great and easy to read in the 21st century. But I haven’t read another version nor the Russian to know for sure. I get my translation recommendations from Reddit, so check there what people say!

I came to Crime and Punishment straight off the back of War and Peace — because apparently I’ve decided that Russian literature is my entire personality now. After five years (yes, five years) grappling with Tolstoy’s sprawling epic, I expected another long-haul commitment. When I saw Dostoevsky’s “shorter” novel still clocked in at over 500 pages, I winced. But here’s the thing: I tore through it in a fortnight.

The difference is pace. Where Tolstoy feels like running a marathon through a vast, meticulously detailed landscape, Dostoevsky is a sprint through a haunted house. It’s claustrophobic, relentless, and over before you’ve caught your breath. Every chapter hooks into the next. Every page dares you to put it down. But you won’t.

The plot

At its heart, this is a story about a man who commits a murder and then spends roughly 500 pages falling apart because of it. Rodion Raskolnikov, our deeply questionable protagonist, is a broke former student who’s convinced himself he’s an “extraordinary” man — the sort who can bend moral rules. Armed with this self-serving philosophy, he murders a pawnbroker.

Spoiler: he is not, in fact, extraordinary.

What follows is a masterclass in psychological unravelling. Raskolnikov doesn’t get caught by some brilliant detective or a damning piece of evidence. He gets caught by his own mind. Guilt eats him alive, manifesting as paranoia, fever dreams, and a spectacular inability to hold a normal conversation. Dostoevsky drags you inside his crumbling psyche, and it is not a comfortable place to be.

Darker Than You’d Think (and Funnier Than You’d Expect)

This is a bleak novel. But it’s also unexpectedly, grimly funny. There’s a dark comedy to Raskolnikov’s sheer uselessness as a criminal. He’s the sort of bloke who’d try to shoplift and forget to bring a bag. His panic, his botched cover-ups, his wild overreactions to the most innocuous questions — it’s almost farcical.

And then there’s the supporting cast. Marmeladov, the drunken civil servant, delivers monologues so melodramatic they’d make Shakespeare blush. Svidrigailov, the aristocratic creep, radiates the energy of that one person who always lingers too long at the pub and makes everyone uncomfortable. These characters aren’t just background noise, they’re mirrors for Raskolnikov, each reflecting a different shade of moral failure.

Is it still relevant today?

Dostoevsky wrote this in 1866, and somehow it doesn’t feel dated. His obsessions with guilt, redemption, and whether morality is universal or something the powerful get to opt out of, these are questions we’re still wrestling with. The prose is dense, yes, but it rewards patience. This isn’t the literary equivalent of eating your vegetables. It’s more like a rich, bitter espresso: intense, but you’ll want another cup.

There are no balls, no witty courtships, no happy endings tied up with a bow. But it’s the kind of book that burrows into your head and refuses to leave. Weeks later, you’ll catch yourself thinking about Raskolnikov’s theory of the extraordinary man and wondering, uncomfortably, what you’d have told yourself in his position.

The Verdict

What surprised me most was how much I recognised Raskolnikov. Not the murder, obviously — but the self-deception, the way he built an elaborate intellectual framework just to avoid admitting he’d made a terrible choice. I think most of us have done some version of that, on a much smaller scale. Dostoevsky makes you confront it, and that’s deeply uncomfortable.

I went into this expecting a classic. I came out with a book that genuinely changed how I think about guilt, justification, and the stories we tell ourselves. That’s not something I say often. If you read one Russian novel this decade, make it this one.

However, I think it’s time to try reading books from another country. Any ideas?

NB: I said I won’t read Russian literature again for a while.. well it’s now April 2026 and I’m back reading Dostoevsky again “Notes from the Underground”. I managed one year, six months, is that good?