Crime and punishment was written by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1866 and is one of the most influential novels in the literary world. While reading this story you can sense the Russian culture and philosophy in the context. The author is widely known for his exploration of human psychology in various situations of Russia.

Crime and Punishment is a story of a young Raskolnikov (the protagonist) and the crime he commits. He considers himself superior to other human beings and develops a theory that, as per his superiority, he has the right to commit any crime if it has some significance for humanity. As the story develops, we can see that Raskolnikov is totally self-assured of his philosophy and in the process, kills the pawnbroker and her half-sister. As an aftermath, he becomes very ill and half-conscious for several days. After he wakes up, he reads all about the crime in the past few days and almost confesses his crime to one of the police officials. As the plot thickens, he develops a special spiritual relation with Sonya Marmeladov who is the daughter of Semyon Marmeladov who died in an accident which Rodya witnessed. Raskolnikov promises her to tell who murdered the old pawnbroker and her sister. After that, he completely confesses his crime to Porfiry and faces 8 years of jail time. The ending is worth reading.

As a whole, this novel is worth its reputation and the writer is successful in brilliantly portraying an individual’s disturbed psychology.

Experience as a Guest Reader in the Book Club I am really glad that I got to be part of this session of the Book club. I am sure every book reader would love to be a part of this club. The discussions that take place are really interesting. To be honest, I wasn’t that fond of the book at first but as we started talking about it, the book turned out to be really fascinating. As a whole, my experience with the book club was really great. My only suggestion would be that the interested participants should be able to at least vote for the upcoming book so that they can somewhat know what they are getting themselves into.