অপরাধ ‍ ও শাস্তি - Aporadh O Shasti

“Trying to untie the string and going to the window, to the light (all her windows were closed, despite the stuffiness), she left him completely for a few seconds and turned her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the loop but did not quite take it out yet; he just held it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were terribly weak; he felt them growing more and more numb and stiff every moment. He was afraid he would let go and drop the axe…suddenly his head seemed to spin…” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (My raging, Raskolnikov-like conscious could not rest without warning you of potential spoilers ahead!) The problem with being a high school student with average intelligence is that you can get fairly good grades with fairly minimal effort. It is an invitation to cut corners and utilize only one half your ass. This happened to me in English class. I'd sit back, take good notes, and bluff my way through various tests (this was back in the day before Google, when my family only had an AOL dial-up connection and all the answers, right and wrong, were on the internet). For these sins, I am now fated to read the classics long after I was supposed to read them. On the plus side, coming to the classics on my own volition has given me a better appreciation than having to read them with a figurative gun to the head. This has allowed me to enjoy certain works to a higher degree. However, I don't think any number of years will allow me to appreciate or enjoy or even suffer Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. First published in 1866, Crime and Punishment is the excruciatingly-detailed psycho-epic about the murder of a pawn shop owner (and her sister). The murderer is named Raskolnikov. He is a former student living in a wretched little closet apartment. He is utterly unlikable: smug, arrogant, temperamental, condescending and self-delusional. Today, we would recognize this person as having a serious mental illness (and the book

‘To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.’ I have been giving a lot of thought to this novel lately. Despite the three years* that have gone by since reading Crime and Punishment—three years in which I’ve read some outstanding literature, joined Goodreads and written just over 100 reviews of the books I’ve journeyed through—Dostoevsky’s novel still resides on it’s throne as one of my personal favorite novels. Top 2 for sure along with Winterson’s The Passion which rotates with this or depending on the wave of drunk I’m riding when asked. No other web of words, brushstrokes or music melody has ever struck me so deeply and consumed me so completely as this book did. The author’s collection of works as a whole has left such a mark on my soul that I felt it necessary to permanently affix his likeness on my arm. Over a century has passed since its initial publication, yet Dostoevsky’s message is still as poignant today as it was when it was first inked onto paper. Crime and Punishment features an immensely engaging blend of intrigue; philosophy; political, social, moral and religious commentary, that all thread together to create a masterpiece of literature that captures the deep, raw core of the human condition when it is at it’s most gruesome and vulnerable. The exquisite literary genius of the novel evoked a strong emotional resonance in me and the timing of my reading was just right to forever wed me to my love of books. Initially envisioned as two separate novels, one following the inner turmoil of a murderer and the other chronicling the melancholic destruction of a family due to a flighty, alcoholic patriarch, Dostoevsky deftly weaves together a multitude of unforgettable characters as they interplay through their tangle of plotlines. There are some incredible scenes that will forever haunt and delight me in my memory, such as the narrow escape from the scene of the crime which had me holding my breath in anxious anticipation, t