“Crime and Punishment”

“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”

According to Goodreads, Fyodor Dostoyevsky came up with the idea for his 1866 novel Crime and Punishment after he gambled away most of his fortune. He wrote the book hoping that, at the very least, the sale of it could pay off his debts.

The crime is committed at the very beginning and the rest of the book depicts the perpetrator’s punishment, more mental, meted by his conscience, than physical. The book gripped me from the beginning when I first read it in high school. Even the central story of Raskolnikov and his struggle with fate keeps verging on comedy. Lots of punchy humor, and physical comedy, even in dark moments, percolate this novel.