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Crime and Punishment (Audio CD) (Abridged)
Crime and Punishment - Audio CD - Abridged Author:Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alex Jennings (Narrator), David McDuff (Translator) A desperate young man plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law -- if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psycholog... more »ical study, a terrifying murder mystery, a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical, religious and social commentary. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in a garret in the gloomy slums of St. Petersburg, carries out his grotesque scheme and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror. Crime And Punishment takes the reader on a journey into the darkest recesses of the criminal and depraved mind, and exposes the soul of a man possessed by both good and evil ... a man who cannot escape his own conscience.
Audio Review:
Dostoyevsky's relentlessly bleak story about poverty and hopelessness in pre-Revolutionary Russia is boiled down to its essence. Alex Jennings is brilliant as Raskolnikov, a man unfortunate enough to have a conscience. Driven by poverty, greed, and a touch of madness, Raskolnikov murders two women for their money and spends the rest of the book trying to live with his crime. Jennings gamely works through the difficult Russian names, making them sound as common as Smith and Jones, while adding just the right amount of pathos and leaden tone to the voices of his characters. The famous novel goes a long way to helping listeners understand the root causes of the Russian Revolution. -- AudioFile
Says my husband: "Very well read by Alex Jennings. The abridgement was a bit jumpy and seemed to lose some of the story's details, but it was still an entertaining and enlightening picture of 19th Century Russian life."