CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky’s ‘psychological record of a
crime’ gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality,
expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never
before. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders alone
through the slums of St Petersburg, deliriously imagining himself above
society’s laws. But when he commits a random murder, only suffering ensues.
Embarking on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police
investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and
finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a
downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption.
* * *
‘A truly great translation . . . Sometimes new translations of old favourites are
surplus to our requirements. . . . Sometimes, though, a new translation really
makes us see a favourite masterpiece afresh. And this English version of
Crime
and Punishment
really is better. . . .
Crime and Punishment
, as well as being an
horrific story and a compelling drama, is also extremely funny. Ready brings
out this quality well. . . . That knife-edge between sentimentality and farce has
been so skilfully and delicately captured here. . . . Ready’s version is colloquial,
compellingly modern and—in so far as my amateurish knowledge of the
language goes—much closer to the Russian. . . . The central scene in the book .
. . is a masterpiece of translation.’
—A. N. Wilson,
The Spectator
‘This vivid, stylish, and rich rendition by Oliver Ready compels the attention of
the reader in a way that none of the others I’ve read comes close to matching.
Using a clear and forceful mid-twentieth-century idiom, Ready gives us an
entirely new kind of access to Dostoyevsky’s singular, self-reflexive and at times
unnervingly comic text. This is the Russian writer’s story of moral revolt, guilt,
and possible regeneration turned into a new work of art. . . . [It] will give a jolt
to the nervous system to anyone interested in the enigmatic Russian author.’
—John Gray,
New Statesman
, ‘Books of the Year’
‘At last we have a translation that brings out the wild humour and vitality of the
original.’
—Robert Chandler,
PEN Atlas
‘A gorgeous translation . . . Inside one finds an excellent apparatus: a
chronology, a terrific contextualizing introduction, a handy compendium of
