Crime and Punishment

Beautiful production quality and the excellent new translation in hard cover, What's not to love!

My review is for the Everyman's Library Classics Edition.These editions are by far the best quality editions of books I have found, for quite a reasonable price, I feel.They are quality bound, with acid-free paper; they have good size print; ribbon page markers; and come with dust jackets.If you see your favourite books, in these editions: I cannot recommend them more.They represent great value for money.

When William Faulkner was asked what are the three greatest novels ever written, he answered 'Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina.' I say 'Crime and Punishment, Crime and Punishment, Crime and Punishment. I read it for the first time in the old Penguin Classics translation by David Magyarshak when I was 19 and it blew my mind away. I was Raskolnikov; ain't we all! I resisted re-reading it for years, frightened it wouldn't be the same, until I read it again at 38, 19 years later, in the current Penguin Classics version translated by David McDuff and benefitted greatly from the excellent textual notes in that edition, which provide a lot of valuable and detailed information on the intellectual, political and historical contexts of the novel. Now at 44, I have just finished reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. I have no Russian, but this is the one to read. This is intuitive, of course, but it reads as the story feels in ways that the other two versions I have read do not. My second reading didn't recapture the incandescence of my first encounter with the book. The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation did. I felt like I was getting the book for the first time (again!) Now for their Karamazov!

In my opinion Dostoevsky is a master in showing the feelings and reactions of his characters, especially when they act under special circumstances. I guess he was a master in human psychology too. His characters are so close to reality, a great stimulation of it.The translation is great too. I think literature and all of us owe Dostoevsky our adoration and respect at least. As a conclusion i think that this one is a book of high standards but i prefer The brothers Karamazov because being his last work i think it's a bit more complete!

as expected

great stuff