Crime and Punishment [Kindle Edition]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Author)

Book Description

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Dostoyevsky's penetrating novel of an intellectual whose moral compass goes haywire, and the detective who hunts him down for his terrible crime, is a stunning psychological portrait, a thriller and a profound meditation on guilt and retribution.

From Publishers Weekly

Dostoyevski's classic novel of murder and guilt, featuring the conflicted killer Raskolnikov and his intellectually nimble antagonist Porfiry Petrovich, is read by the well-regarded Dick Hill. The combination should make for a must-listen audiobook, but the results are disappointingly plodding. Hill overemotes much of Dostoyevski's emotionally charged dialogue, rendering a delicate series of encounters as an array of outbursts and breakdowns. Listeners might find themselves wishing that Hill would restrain himself from the pitfalls of facile emotion in favor of a straight delivery of the inherent drama and descriptive splendor of the novel In a welcome technological twist, however, Tantor includes an e-book with this audiobook (as it does with most of its classic audiobooks), giving readers multiple options for how they might prefer to encounter Dostoyevski. (Sept.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 672 KB
• Print Length: 614 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1466307455
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Public Domain Books (March 1, 2001)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000JQU802
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

487 of 503 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Check the Publisher of this book before you buy July 8, 2010

By Kiwi TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Crime and Punishment is one great novel. However, we have a bit of misleading marketing going on here. Make sure you're buying the version you think you're buying before you order. "Crime and Punishment" published by General Books LLC is a poor quality scanned in version. If you do the "Look Inside" thing on this book, you'll see the inside of another version of the book, NOT the one you will receive.

To give you a few quotes from the publishers website: "We created your book using OCR software ..... with up to 3,500 characters per page, even one percent can be an annoying number of typos.... After we re-typeset ... your book, the page numbers change so the old index and table of contents no longer work .... we usually remove them. .... Our OCR software can't distinguish between an illustration and a smudge or library stamp so it ignores everything except type. ..... We created your book using a robot who turned and photographed each page. Our robot is 99 percent accurate. But sometimes two pages stick together. And sometimes a page may even be missing from our copy of the book. .....". There's no manual editing whatsover.

You get the general idea. Unfortunately, books published by General Books LLC are named, seemingly intentionally, so that they have reviews associated with much better quality imprints. General Books LLC is an imprint of VDM Published (google them on Wikipedia), which is flooding Amazon with poor quality reprints and, unfortunately, many of them have the reviews associated with the original or with beter quality imprints associated with them.

Seems like it's Caveat Emptor on Amazon these days as Amazon certainly doesn't seem to be doing anything to protect it's customers from this Publisher.

138 of 141 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Amazon needs to start recognizing the difference in translations March 20, 2011

By Daniel J. Moriarty

Format:Kindle Edition

This is not the version of the book I clicked on! When you look at the (paperback) edition of Crime and Punishment translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, it says right below it, "Start reading Crime and Punishment on your Kindle..." and also lists the different versions available - paperback, hardcover, etc. - and includes a Kindle Edition. But when you click on either, you get this, which is a completely different translation. Pevear and Volokhonsky have been widely praised, their translations now considered far and away the best English versions available of various classic works of Russian Literature. But Amazon lumps everything with the same title as if it were the same product. Some of the customer-uploaded images of the book's cover even say that it is the Pevear and Volokhonsky version, but it is not. It's a 1914 translation by Constance Garnett.

This is the reason people started to hate big box and online bookstores when they first started putting neighborhood bookstores out of business -- because they don't seem to care about books, just making money. But what's funny here is that they could actually charge money for the better translation, since it's new, but instead they choose to give away an inferior version and pretend it's the same thing. (They do offer the Pevear and Volokhonsky version of Demons for a price - a version easier to distinguish because the newer translation even changes the title from the less-accurate The Possessed - versions with that title are available for free.) Also, because they don't distinguish between different translations, there is no button available under the Pevear and Volokhonsky version to request that the publisher make it available for Kindle....

It's also difficult to know what version of a book is being reviewed sometimes. I'll be reading reviews on the Kindle Edition page, and the reviewer will describe the fine leather binding. This is especially frustrating now that I realize the actual content - the language - of the book I'm buying could be different from the one I read about online.

Since getting my Kindle, I've been impressed by the machine itself, but thoroughly unimpressed by Amazon's handling of content. They should focus less exclusively on getting people to buy the device, and work harder at improving the way they sell books and other content for it. Read more ›

292 of 313 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic for a Reason April 14, 2000

By Paul McGrath

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I initially approached this book with a great deal of trepidation. I had never read Dostoyevsky, and was concerned that I would get bogged down in some lengthy, mind-numbingly boring, nineteenth-century treatise on the bestial nature of man or something. I am happy to report this is not the case. Instead, and to my delight, it is a smoothly flowing and fascinating story of a young man who succumbs to the most base desire, and the impact this has both psychologically and otherwise on himself and those around him.

To be sure, the book seems wordy in places, but I suspect this has to do with the translation. And what translator in his right mind would be bold enough to edit the great Dostoyevsky? But this is a very minor problem.

What we get with Dostoyevsky is dramatic tension, detailed and believable human characters, and brilliant insight into human nature. Early in the novel our hero meets and has a lengthy conversation with Marmeladov, a drunkard. This conversation is never uninteresting and ultimately becomes pathetic and heartbreaking, but I kept wondering why so much time was spent on it. As I got deeper into the book, I understood why this conversation was so important, and realized that I was in the hands of a master storyteller. This is also indicative of the way in which the story reveals itself. Nothing is hurried. These people speak the way we actually speak to one another in real life, and more importantly, Dostoyevsky is able to flesh out his characters into whole, three-dimensional human beings.

And what a diverse group of characters! Each is fleshed out, each is marvelously complex.... Razujmikhin, the talkative, gregarious, good-hearted, insecure and destitute student; Sonia, the tragic child-prostitute, with a sense of rightness in the world; Petrovich, the self-important, self-made man, completely out of touch with his own humanity; Dunia, the honorable, wronged sister: we feel like we know these people because we've met people like them. They fit within our understanding of the way human beings are.

Dostoyevsky also displays great insight into human nature. Svidrigailov, for example, talks of his wife as liking to be offended. "We all like to be offended," he says, "but she in particular loved to be offended." It suddenly struck me how true this is. It gives us a chance to act indignantly, to lash out at our enemies, to gain favor with our allies. I don't believe I've ever seen this thought expressed in literature before. In fact, it never occurred to me in real life! Petrovich, Dunia's suitor, not only expects to be loved, but because of his money, and her destitution, he expects to be adored! To be worshipped! He intentionally sought out a woman from whome he expected to get this, and is comletely flummoxed when she rejects him. His is an unusual character, but completely realized.

There is so much more to talk about: the character of Raskolnikov, which is meticulously and carefully revealed; the sense of isolation which descends on him after committing his crime; the cat and mouse game played on him by the police detective. I could go on and on. I haven't even mentioned the historical and social context in which this takes place. Suffice to say this is a very rich book.

Do not expect it to be a rip-roaring page turner. Sit down, relax, take your time, and savor it. It will be a very rewarding experience. And thank you SL, for recommending it. Read more ›

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#14 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#89 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#14 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#89 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary