First published in Russian in 1866, Crime and Punishment follows Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished former student in St Petersburg who murders an elderly pawnbroker in an attempt to test a theory about moral exceptionalism.

He wants to understand, and coax out the consequences, of an act that may prove that certain individuals possess the right to transgress ordinary ethical boundaries in pursuit of supposedly greater ends. The novel then proceeds into one of the most feverish investigations of guilt, rationalisation, suffering and conviction, that literature has ever unearthed. 

Dostoyevsky's great achievement is to make philosophical argument inseparable from psychological experience, allowing Raskolnikov's intellectual certainty to deteriorate under the pressure of his own consciousness. Moving between poverty, religious faith, social alienation and the contradictions of nineteenth-century Russian society, the novel asks whether morality can be established through reason alone, and what happens when an individual attempts to place himself outside the obligations that bind him to others. This vintage Signet edition features Sidney Monas's 1968 translation, accompanied by his substantial translator's preface and a map of St Petersburg tracing the novel's geography.

Signet Classics / New American Library, New York, 1968. Fourth printing of the first paperback edition of Sidney Monas's translation. Unabridged mass-market paperback with striking illustrated cover. Fair to good vintage condition, with visible edge wear, cover rubbing, creasing and age-toning throughout. Decorative former owner's bookplate with handwritten name affixed to preliminary page.