Crime and Punishment

This vivid translation by David McDuff has been acclaimed as the most accessible version of Dostoyevsky’s great novel, rendering its dialogue with a unique force and naturalism. This edition also includes a new chronology of Dostoyevsky’s life and work.

@RobPeterPayPaul It’s hard being a poor student – lots of work, crappy room, and I have the ugliest hat this side of the Urals.

It is a bit of a rut being so miserably impoverished. I need something to lighten up my life, something exciting…

I’ve got it. Rather than accept financial aid from my friend, I’ll murder an elderly money-lender in cold blood. Why? I’m not telling.

However, if you’d like to guess at my psychological and ideological motivations for the next couple of hundred years, be my guest.

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), one of nineteenth-century Russia’s greatest novelists, spent four years in a convict prison in Siberia, after which he was obliged to enlist in the army. In later years his penchant for gambling sent him deeply into debt. Most of his important works were written after 1864, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, all available from Penguin Classics.

David McDuff was educated at the University of Edinburgh and has translated a number of works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

David McDuff was educated at the University of Edinburgh and has translated a number of works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

David McDuff was educated at the University of Edinburgh and has translated a number of works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.