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Description: Crime and Punishment
was written by Dostoevsky, a Russian, who himself was arrested in his 20s for
reading Fourier and Proudhon. He was spared from hanging and had to do
hard labour for many years in prison. Eventually released, he started a
couple of books when first released from prison that he was not allowed by the government to write due to
Russian censorship at the time. He remains
the most read Russian author in his homeland.
Classification: Mystery & Suspense
/ Crime
Publication Date:
Length: total 39 Chapters in 6
Parts
Illustrations: none
Book attributes: Printable / No code required to
open book
Book ID: GC-CAP-Dostoevsky
Download Size: 1 MB
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CHAPTER I
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of
the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though
in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His
garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more
like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret,
dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time
he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which
invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a
sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was
hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but
for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition,
verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in
himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not
only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the
anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had
given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all
desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror
for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her
trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats
and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to
lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and
slip out unseen.
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