Raskolnikov, an impoverished student in 1866 St. Petersburg, commits murder and grapples with guilt and moral consequences in Dostoevsky's psychological fiction. This Russian classic explores crime, punishment, and redemption through intense character study, presented in Constance Garnett's translation.
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her. This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He ha…Continue reading →
This is the Constance Garnett translation, a public-domain English text. Marginalia presents it unabridged, with chapter navigation, your reading position saved, and optional AI commentary on any passage.
A Russian novelist who transformed personal suffering into literary masterpieces, this 19th-century writer explored the darkest corners of human psychology through works like Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. His profound examination of guilt, redemption, and moral struggle established him as one of literature's greatest psychological realists. All works by Fyodor Dostoevsky →
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