Crime and Punishment (Bantam Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Fyodor Dostoevsky (Author), Constance Garnett (Translator), Joseph Frank (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: October 15, 1996

A desperate young man plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law -- if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psychological study, a terrifying murder mystery, a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical, religious and social commentary. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in a garret in the gloomy slums of St. Petersburg, carries out his grotesque scheme and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror. Crime And Punishment takes the reader on a journey into the darkest recesses of the criminal and depraved mind, and exposes the soul of a man possessed by both good and evil ... a man who cannot escape his own conscience.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The best [translation of Crime and Punishment] currently available…An especially faithful re-creation…with a coiled-spring kinetic energy…Don’t miss it.” –Washington Post Book World

“This fresh, new translation…provides a more exact, idiomatic, and contemporary rendition of the novel that brings Fyodor Dostoevsky’s tale achingly alive…It succeeds beautifully.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Reaches as close to Dostoevsky’s Russian as is possible in English…The original’s force and frightening immediacy is captured…The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation will become the standard English version.”–Chicago Tribune

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Classics; Reprint edition (October 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553211757
• ISBN-13: 978-0553211757
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (618 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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#17 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

488 of 504 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 ›