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  • Published: 11 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141192802
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $21.00

Crime and Punishment




The acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's masterpiece for Penguin Classics

'Will I really - I mean, really - actually take an axe, start bashing her on the head, smash her skull to pieces? . . . Will I really slip in sticky, warm blood, force the lock, steal, tremble, hide, all soaked in blood . . .axe in hand? . . . Lord, will I really?'

This new translation of Dostoyevsky's 'psychological record of a crime' gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before.

  • Published: 11 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141192802
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $21.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November 1821. He had six siblings and his mother died in 1837 and his father in 1839. He graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering in 1846 but decided to change careers and become a writer. His first book, Poor Folk, did very well but on 23rd April 1849 he was arrested for subversion and sentenced to death. After a mock-execution his sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia where he developed epilepsy.He was released in 1854. His 1860 book, The House of the Dead was based on these experiences. In 1857 he married Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. After his release he adopted more conservative and traditional values and rejected his previous socialist position. In the following years he spent a lot of time abroad, struggled with an addiction to gambling and fell deeply in debt. His wife died in 1864 and he married Anna Grigoryeva Snitkina. In the following years he published his most enduring and successful books, including Crime and Punishment (1865). He died on 9th February 1881

Also by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Praise for Crime and Punishment

A truly great translation ... Sometimes new translations of old favourites are surplus to our requirements. Sometimes, though, a new translation really makes us see a favourite masterpiece afresh. And this English version of Crime and Punishment really is better ... Crime and Punishment, as well as being an horrific story and a compelling drama, is also extremely funny. Ready brings out this quality well ... That knife-edge between sentimentality and farce has been so skilfully and delicately captured here ... Ready's version is colloquial, compellingly modern and - in so far as my amateurish knowledge of the language goes - much closer to the Russian. ... The central scene in the book is a masterpiece of translation

A. N. Wilson, Spectator

Oliver Ready's version is outstanding in finding le mot juste for all of Dostoevsky's graphic verbs and odd objects (few Russian writers have a lexical range to equal Dostoevsky's)

The Times Literary Supplement

Oliver Ready's translation of Crime and Punishment . . . is a five-star hit, which will make you see the original with new eyes

A. N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement, 'Books of the Year'

I was delighted to discover Oliver Ready's new translation of Crime and Punishment ... It is brimful of a young man's rage and energy and bullshit. I adored it

Peter Carey

This vivid, stylish and rich rendition by Oliver Ready compels the attention of the reader in a way that none of the others I've read comes close to matching. Using a clear and forceful mid-20th-century idiom, Ready gives us an entirely new kind of access to Dostoyevsky's singular, self-reflexive and at times unnervingly comic text. This is the Russian writer's story of moral revolt, guilt and possible regeneration turned into a new work of art ... [It] will give a jolt to the nervous system to anyone interested in the enigmatic Russian author

John Gray, New Statesman, 'Books of the Year'

At last we have a translation that brings out the wild humour and vitality of the original

Robert Chandler

A dazzlingly agile and robust new translation . . . Ready, who has a practiced ear for Russian dialect and a natural grace with English, is exceptionally deft at navigating [the novel's] challenges ... His ability to reproduce the whole heady brew of Dostoyevsky's novel in a consistent but nimble modern English ought to be applauded

Los Angeles Review of Books

A tour de force built from prose that is not only impeccable in its own right but also perfectly suited to the story, its characters, its epoch and themes. We should treasure this new translation and, indeed, this new book

New York Journal of Books

Ready's translation is nothing less than a wonder. He mirrors the tonal shifts in Dostoyevsky's original more nimbly than any English-language translator has before, and he catches the dark humour that runs through the book mostly below its surface, and best of all, he captures the essential, unchanging absurdity of Raskolnikov perfectly ... Ready's version crackles with grubby, demented vitality

Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

Ready's lively translation succeeds in admirably capturing the psychological intensity of Dostoyevsky's style. . . . [It] replicates natural speech patterns in a way that Pevear and Volokhonsky's rather stilted translation does not. . . . [Ready's] English prose is rhythmic and, at times, poetic. . . . It is [the novel's] sense of frenzy that Ready so brilliantly captures in his new translation, which will ensure that another generation of readers remains enraptured by Crime and Punishment

Slavic and East European Journal

Ready's vivid, new version ... is more than a Titanic idea of a great translation. It is the real thing ... Crisp and compelling, building on staccato rhythmic structures to heighten the novel's dramatic tension, then elegantly sidling into Dostoyevsky's abrupt denouement, his translation brings new life to a 150-year-old classic, rendering the familiar in fresh light

The Wichita Eagle

A gorgeous translation ... Inside one finds an excellent apparatus: a chronology, a terrific contextualizing introduction, a handy compendium of suggestions for further reading, and cogent notes on the translation. . . . But the best part is Ready's supple translation of the novel itself. Ready manages to cleave as closely as any prior translator to both spirit and letter, while rendering them into an English that is a relief to read

The East-West Review

What a pleasure it is to see Oliver Ready's new translation bring renewed power to one of the world's greatest works of fiction ... Ready's work is of substantial and superb quality ... [His] version portrays more viscerally and vividly the contradictory nature of Raskolnikov's consciousness. ... Ready evokes the crux of Crime and Punishment with more power than the previous translators have ... with an enviably raw economy of prose

The Curator

[An] excellent new translation

Critical Mass

Ready's new translation of Crime and Punishment is thoughtful and elegant [and] shows us once again why this novel is one of the most intriguing psychological studies ever written. His translation also manages to revive the disturbing humour of the original ... In some places, Ready's version echoes Pevear and Volokhonsky's prize-winning Nineties version, but he often renders Dostoyevsky's text more lucidly while retaining its deliberately uncomfortable feel. . . . Ready's colloquial, economical use of language gives the text a new power

Russia Beyond the Headlines

I was bowled over, by the novel itself and the utterly brilliant translation, which grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go. In the course of my work, I go through mountains of nonfiction to try to understand the world. This summer, I was reminded of the power of a novel to uncover something much deeper about the human spirit

Fareed Zakaria, The New York Times Book Review

A clever modern translation of this classic of Russian horror that gave me nightmares as a student. We journey through suffering, repentance and expiation of sin

Neil Mendoza, The Week

What a great book this is and nothing like the dated, heavy Russian literature I thought I might have to wade through. It's a page turner - a dark, comic thriller with an anti-hero akin to Macbeth and characters so perfectly rendered as to leap from the page. The style is really modern and constantly delves into the mad thoughts of the protagonist - if you can call him that - Raskolnikov. Try it, especially Oliver Ready's high-tempo version

Gary Kemp