Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment, Russian Prestupleniye i nakazaniye, novel by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1866. His first masterpiece, the novel is a psychological analysis of the poor former student Raskolnikov, whose theory that he is an extraordinary person able to take on the spiritual responsibility of using evil means to achieve humanitarian ends leads him to murder. The act produces nightmarish guilt in Raskolnikov. The story is one of the finest studies of the psychopathology of guilt written in any language.