Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky, a Crime and Its Punishment

The Sinner and the Saint is a book about the creation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which tells the story of the two men central to it: Dostoevsky himself and Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer and glamorous egoist who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. It explores how the new ideas swirling around Europe in the nineteenth century directed both men's lives and why they still appall and entice us today.

Format: Hardback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 11 November 2021
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

From the acclaimed author of The Most Dangerous Book comes the incredible true story behind the creation of a masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. In the summer of 1865, the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in a cheap hotel in Wiesbaden, unable to leave until he had paid the bill. Having lost the last of his money at the roulette table, his debts hung heavy over his head, his epileptic seizures were worsening, and his wife and beloved brother were dead. Desperate, a story came to him, a way to write himself out of his predicament: the murderer Raskolnikov, the hot, disorienting swirl of St. Petersburg, the axe, the terrible crime, and the murderer's paranoia. The book was Crime and Punishment, and from the moment it was published, it was a sensation. But how did this haunting tale of guilt come to be, and why does it still hold such a sway over us all these years later?

The Sinner and the Saint provides us with the story of the creation of a work of literature that has bewitched readers for over a century, and of the two men so central to it: Dostoevsky himself, and Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer and glamorous egoist who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s and whose sensational story provided the germ of the novel. As reports of his trial tore through Europe, readers asked themselves: could the instincts of nihilism, the philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries, also drive a man to murder? Showing how both men's lives were directed by the intoxicating new ideas swirling around Europe in the nineteenth century, The Sinner and the Saint also reveals why they still appall and entice us today. Thrilling and definitive, this is the story of a masterpiece.

Weight: 678g
Dimension: 164 x 240 x 44 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780241235942