Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky

I first read Crime and Punishment in 1988 in the Penguin Classics edition that was available at the time by David Magarshak. It must have been done in the 1960s but it read well and it made Crime and Punishment my favourite novel alongside Kafka’s The Trial. Penguin went on to publish a newer translation by David McDuff in the 1990s but that passed me by. I stuck with my old edition, which I’ve now read several times. I decided to read this edition by Oliver Ready for two reasons. First, my old edition is in a box somewhere in my storage unit and I’ve no idea where it is. Second, I heard Oliver Ready talking about his translation on the radio a few months ago, and I thought I would give him a chance. I will get my pedantry out of the way early. A translator has no business using poor grammar, no matter what the original text might be doing, so, please, no more “sat” where we should have “sitting” and no more “there’s” where we should have “there are”. These horrors may have crept into the vernacular, but there is no need to spoil a literary text with sloppy grammar. Having said that, the translation on the whole does justice to a fantastic novel in that it “feels” like Dostoyevsky. Oliver Ready provides a very good introduction setting out key aspects of the author’s life that helped produce the novel, and the all-important political and cultural environment of Russia in the 1860s that led to all these “new ideas” that Luzhin tries to acquaint himself with. The translator also provides many useful notes explaining the geography of Petersburg and illuminating various topical references. These alone make this translation worthwhile. When I think about my favourite writers, I find that most of them suffered in some way. In Dostoyevsky’s case, he lost his mother at 15, then his father was murdered by one of his serfs a couple of years later. Dostoyevsky was arrested for being a member of a liberal discussion group and he knew what it’s like to stand in front of a firing squad believing that in a few moments you’re going to be shot. He was reprieved at the last moment but then endured years of forced labour in Siberia, loaded with chains and manacles. I’m not saying anything about the plot because either you know it or you don’t; and if you don’t know it, you ought to find out. I’m not in the habit of pestering people to read works by dead white males, but this is one book I would urge anyone to read.

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.

Came in perfect condition

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?

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

great pricing.