Crime and Punishment: A New Translation

As featured on PBS's The Great American Read

An event to be celebrated, a “rare Dostoesvsky translation” (William Mills Todd III, Harvard University) that fully captures the literary achievements of the original.

Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this masterpiece of literary realism is ultimately an immersive tale of passion and redemption—indeed, "the best of all murder stories" (Harold Bloom), "most perfect in pacing and structure. There is no more gripping novel in the world" (Michael Dirda).

Now, acclaimed translator Michael R. Katz breathes fresh life into this ageless classic in a sparkling new translation, with novel insights into the linguistic richness, subtle tones, and cunning humor of Dostoevsky’s magnum opus. Embracing the complex linguistic blend inherent in modern literary Russian that has provided an exceptionally fertile source of images and diction for Russian writers since the time of Pushkin, Katz recaptures the richness of tone and register of the novel’s most poignant and significant passages. Sensitive to this linguistic mosaic, Katz ably recreates the feeling of the original Russian for the English reader, allowing the text to evoke the same stirring emotional responses as the author intended.

With its searing and unique portrayal of the labyrinthine universe of nineteenth-century Russia, this masterful rendering of Crime and Punishment will be the translation of choice for years to come.