Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment is based on Dostoevsky’s own terrifying experiences of summary justice and the cruel penal system of Tsarist Russia. It is a dark tale set in the dingy tenements, backstreets and bars of pre-Revolutionary St Petersburg and concerns the actions of a murderer – Raskolnikov – who, setting himself in the role of a superman of Napoleonic proportions, decides to commit homicide as a matter of principle. Thus the scene is set for an epic story of careful criminal investigation, Roskolníkov’s entrapment in the tentacles of his own conscience, and the possibility of his eventual salvation through punishment and suffering.