Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

An excellent if stressful book. The first Dostoevsky that I’ve read, and I was pleased to find it far more approachable than I’d anticipated. The book follows a destitute student in 1860’s St. Petersburg with a weird sort of napoleon complex, who commits an evil crime and falls apart over it. Egotistical and mostly unlikable to me, he is handsome, popular, respected, loved by friends and family, and quite deranged, often delirious from nihilism, disease, poverty and guilt. Reminds me a of Keep the Aspidistra Flying by Orwell (review, ⭐⭐), a horrible protagonist who is horrible to everyone and who is their own worst enemy. Reading it caused me so much tension sometimes I had to put it down, and for that I award it three stars. An amazing cast, although most of the females are weepy or mad or pathetic, the men are beautifully realised. I only wish that horse hadn’t been so horribly killed :( PS I am v glad to find Marmeladov translates as marmalade as that’s what I called him in my head.