Crime and Punishment

This book is the author's project of the remarkable St. Petersburg artist Mikhail Bychkov, whose illustrations help us to vividly and concretely envision the world of one of the most significant novels by F. M. Dostoevsky. The novel "Crime and Punishment" (1866) had a colossal impact on the development of Russian and world literature. It was conceived as a "psychological report of one crime", however, the writer strayed far from his original plans. "Crime and Punishment" presents the reader with the most important moral and philosophical questions about faith, conscience, sin, and redemption through suffering, unfolding as a grand philosophical exploration of human nature, as a Christian tragedy about the death and resurrection of the soul. "The atmosphere of the novel is often more important than specific scenes. The feeling of hopelessness, the tragedy of existence, I conveyed through all the illustrations," writes M. Bychkov.