Crime and Punishment

Written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Narrated by George Guidall

This is the novel that ensured Fyodor Dostoevsky's place as a giant of Russian literature. First published in 1866, this legendary work continues to enthrall readers around the world and earn Dostoevsky legions of fans with every printing. Timeless, and breathtaking in scope, Crime and Punishment-the story of a young Russian intellectual's decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker and his subsequent intellectual and spiritual crisis-is one of the most famous novels in all of literature. This absorbing book attacks the overly logical nihilistic ideals of reason and science and proves that only through love, self-denial and suffering comes salvation. George Guidall's fluent interpretation of the Russian names enhances this deep, multi-leveled text, and liberates Dostoevsky's eternal prose with dimensions of color and feeling lost to the printed page alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 17, 2000
• ISBN: 9781436100007

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. Between 1838 and 1843 he studied at the St Petersburg Engineering Academy. His first work of fiction was the epistolary novel Poor Folk (1846), which met with a generally favourable response. However, his immediately subsequent works were less enthusiastically received. In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the socialist Petrashevsky circle, and subjected to a mock execution. He suffered four years in a Siberian penal settlement and then another four years of enforced military service. He returned to writing in the late 1850s and travelled abroad in the 1860s. It was during the last twenty years of his life that he wrote the iconic works, such as Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which were to form the basis of his formidable reputation. He died in 1881.