Publisher's Synopsis
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is a penniless student, aged twenty-three years. Lack of money, he had to abandon his studies and lives in a seedy neighborhood of St. Petersburg. Plagued by poverty, he isolates himself from the rest of the world. So he sells his last good watch his father, a usurer, an idea comes to mind: murder is morally tolerable if it leads to an improvement of the human condition? He decided to assassinate the usurer for some time, but his plan does not go as planned and he commits a double murder. Remorse and guilt, he realizes he can not be forgiven and he will never be a great man, as he hopes so. Raskolnikov goes from crime to punishment. After getting sick and staying in bed, nailed by fever for several days, Raskolnikov thinks everyone he meets the suspect of the murder; knowledge of the crime makes it almost crazy. But he met Sonia Semionovna, a prostitute with whom he falls in love. Dostoevsky uses this relationship as an allegory of God's love for fallen humanity and the redemptive power of love. But Raskolnikov is redeemed by the confession of the murder and deportation to Siberia.
