Recommended Age:
16
+
Best for mature independent readers who enjoy deeply psychological literary fiction and are prepared for an intense, unrelenting examination of guilt, morality, and the consequences of ideological self-justification.
About the Book
Set in the cramped, poverty-stricken streets of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, this Russian novel follows a young former student who convinces himself he has the moral right to commit a murder — and then spends the rest of the book in psychological torment as guilt, paranoia, and the investigative pressure of a clever detective close in around him. It is a foundational work of psychological fiction and one of literature's most intense explorations of conscience.
Content Ratings
💡
Intense Themes
Sustained psychological torment, guilt, paranoia, moral philosophy around the right to kill, poverty, and suicidal ideation are central and unrelenting throughout.
⚔️
Moderate Violence
A double murder is depicted at the novel's outset with some physical detail; subsequent violence is psychological rather than physical.
Engagement:
Genre:
Mystery
Published:
1866
Page Count:
545
Where to Buy:
