Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
philosophical trauma literary fiction injustice

Our Take

Raskolnikov's mind is the most uncomfortable place in literature. Dostoevsky makes you live inside a murder and its aftermath — inside guilt that cannot be named because the murderer refuses to feel guilty. The punishment is not legal. It is the slow collapse of a philosophy, and it is merciless.

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