# Crime and Punishment

**Author:** Fyodor Dostoyevsky
**Tags:** Psychological fiction, Russia, Detective and mystery stories, Saint Petersburg (Russia)
**Price:** Free
**Formats:** DOCX, EPUB, FB2, PDF, TXT
**Downloads:** 40
**Added:** 10.07.2026
**URL:** https://samolit.com/books/95834

## Description

In the sweltering, overcrowded streets of St. Petersburg, a destitute former student named Rodion Raskolnikov nurses a dangerous idea: that certain extraordinary individuals are permitted to transgress moral law for the greater good. Living in a cramped garret, sickly and dressed in rags, he is nonetheless proud and intelligent, and he is contemplating committing an awful crime. When he acts on his theory by murdering a pawnbroker, the act spirals into unexpected violence and plunges him into a fevered, guilt-ridden nightmare. As suspicion tightens around him, Raskolnikov is drawn into a psychological duel with a shrewd investigator while his relationships with his devoted sister, his anxious mother, and Sonya, a young woman forced into prostitution to support her family, pull him toward confession and redemption. Dostoyevsky's masterwork is at once a gripping crime narrative and a profound philosophical inquiry into guilt, free will, poverty, and morality. Set against the poverty and moral confusion of Tsarist Russia, it remains one of literature's most piercing explorations of conscience, offering no easy answers about justice, punishment, or the possibility of redemption after unspeakable wrongdoing.