Penguin Classics Crime and Punishment

I agree with all the enthusiastic reviews--I loved the book. I also found it easier to read and understand than I'd anticipated and believe the translator, Oliver Ready, deserves much of the credit for that. I also found his footnotes to be very helpful and surprised myself by reading almost every one as I went along. I'd love to find an audio version of this translation but haven't had any luck so far. In answer to reviewer marcus1's question, the version narrated by Nigel Anthony looks to be severely abridged and I think is a reading of the Constance Garnett translation. It's really disappointing that that's the version Amazon links to this translation. There are so many versions of the book available on Audible that the company might not be willing to do another. But maybe if enough of us show interest in a reading of this translation, they will consider it.

A fine translation. Raskolnikov wants to be an ubermensch, "to be a man, not a louse," yet ironically molds himself after Napoleon - willing to sacrifice OTHERS for his own purposes, and thus making himself less like a human and more like a parasite - that lives off the blood of others. My only minor beef with the edition I have is the cover art - although it is super cool, Raskolnikov is pictured as a scary crusty older guy, while in the book he is young, attractive, and yes, disturbed. (This review was written for the "Oliver Ready" translation - I don't know but perhaps should assume that when it shows up under the audiobook narrated by Nigel Anthony, that it is the same translation. There's no indication - does anyone know?

This translation is quite acceptable and does the text justice. Penguin never disappoints. On a personal note, the cover is absolutely an eye-catcher: I got so many questions about what I was reading on the first day I received it! A great option for the first time reader or a lover of the old Constance Gardner version.

I read this book just for fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but the protagonist, Roskolikov, is a childish, unlikable jackass. I get the Internal struggle and the supposed justification for his crime in the context of mid-nineteenth century Russia. But I couldn't bring myself to sympathize with a young man who comes off as an egocentric, irrational, silly little boy whose inability to comprehend the basic laws of nature results in two murders. I wanted him to be punished and frankly life in Siberia wasn't punishment enough. The kid was just a creepy little jerk.

Dostoyevsky brilliantly demonstrates the ultimate fate of individuals, and states, which remove the foundation of the divine from human consciousness. His masterful work indicates that the act of removing God removes the Imago Dei. As a result, human life has no intrinsic value. Raskolnikov's existential punishment, far more than his legal punishment, reveals that there is a reality deep within himself that disagrees with his nihilistic philosophy. I believe that Dostoyevsky's novel predicts the death and destruction that such philosophies wreaked on humanity when given opportunity through Marxist and communist regimes.

I love this Dostoyevsky novel and this translation by Oliver Ready is superlative. I emphatically recommend this version!

You’ve heard about how great this book is. Just go ahead and buy it now and read it. It’s truly a masterpiece.

It is a melodrama, no doubt about it; but it is his departures from the norm and his insights into aberrant psychology that makes it such a fascinating book. It also has unforgettable (if highly contrived) scenes, such as the one when Sonya is accused of stealing a hundred-ruble note. Tormented characters, abject poverty, squalor, madness, passion, philosophy, murder, drunkenness ... it has everything, except for gratuitous sex scenes.

Quick disclaimer: I am a completely novice reader and this is actually the first book I have willingly decided to purchase and read, and therefore all the opinions below are through that lens. The quality of the book is great, pages are a bit thin but not too thin, I think they are just right. The cover is also really cool- I think from all the versions of this book I have seen online, this is one of the best looking ones. The translation is also very solid, I read Garnett’s version before this and it took me a few chapters to get used to. I have also heard that this translation (by Oliver Ready) is one of the best for English readers who want something close to the original Russian book. In my opinion that checks out because it is very easy to digest. Also, what I really like, is that there is a thorough explanation for uncommon words or phrases that might not make sense at first, at the end of the book, containing insightful and helpful information that you might not find by just googling. I have no idea if this is standard for all books like this, but that’s a pro of this book that you can keep in mind. The text is also the perfect size, not too big and not too small. Anyway, I think this book is totally worth it.

I think everyone who is buying such a book knows what the content is and talking about the book, is printed clearly. Everything as expected.

Clássico russo que todos os psiquiatras deveriam ler

I hesitate to review Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” as there are plenty of reviews and commentaries out there by people who know much more about the book than I ever will. But humility has never been my strongest point, so here are a few thoughts. It is, of course, a masterpiece, and I can’t imagine giving it anything other than five stars. We spend most of it in the head of Raskolnikov, whose terrible flaws we know all too well (spoiler alert – he’s a murderer), but we are drawn to him and, though we witness his crime in all its horror, we can’t help but hope the punishment will not be too severe. Other characters are equally complex. All of the men have their flaws, but with perhaps one exception, they all have their virtues too. With the women, I felt that Dostoyevsky’s characterisations weren’t quite so rounded. Sonya, in particular, seemed a bit too good to be true. In the twentieth century, the prostitute with a heart of gold became a familiar trope in certain genres, but I can imagine that it was perhaps daring or even (Dostoyevsky wouldn’t like this word) progressive to paint such a sympathetic portrait of a prostitute in the 1860s. Sonya is a girl from the minor nobility reduced to selling her body thanks to her useless drunk of a father and her cruel stepmother. The shame both felt by her and imposed on her by others is painted skilfully, but I would imagine her to be angry at such a loss of status and find nothing of that in the text. Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya is more complex, but again, I find her a bit too good to be true. If the young women are placed on a pedestal, the older women are quite ridiculous, sometimes hilariously so. Dostoyevsky’s satire of the snobbery of lesser aristocratic women reduced to utter destitution is merciless. As a comfortably-off middle-class Brit, I found the extreme poverty endured by most of the high-class characters in the book quite startling. Like any book, this one is of its time. There is a smattering of anti-Semitism, unfortunately. Some of the chapters are a bit too long for modern tastes, and I can imagine a twenty-first century editor complaining that a lot of the dialogue doesn’t sound natural and needs to be cut. This editor might also scrawl in the margin, “You didn’t get the show-not-tell memo, did you?” (There is plenty of showing but an awful lot of telling. He seems to have got away with it, though.) The book is highly ideological, but I enjoyed it despite the fact that I don’t subscribe to the conservative and Christian outlook Dostoyevsky is promoting. He skewers atheistic utopian socialists quite brilliantly, but his main target is the kind of amoral hyper-individualism that today we associate with the likes of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. Here, I have a great deal of sympathy with his critique, even if I come at it from a more liberal humanist bent.

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