Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment"

“In this extraordinary book, distinguished scholar Deborah Martinsen draws upon a lifetime of scholarship in Dostoevsky studies, narrative theory, and ethics, as well as decades of classroom teaching, to craft a riveting, efficient introduction to Dostoevsky’s great novel. Accessible, insightful, deceptively slight in size, A Reader’s Guide will offer something new to readers at all stages of their Dostoevsky journey: seasoned experts, teachers, students, and curious newcomers. … A great teacher and scholar lives on in the ideas [Martinsen] shares, the conversations she inspires, and the example she sets. From this book we learn fresh, bracing new ways of reading a text that we may have mistakenly thought that we fully understood. More importantly, we are inspired by this communication from an intellectual at the top of her game and by the guidance it offers as we seek to live ethical lives in our own thinking, writing and teaching.”

— Carol Apollonio, Dostoevsky Studies (2022: Vol. 25)

“Deborah Martinsen’s Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide is a slim but erudite volume for readers and teachers of the 1866 novel. Martinsen synthesizes here the wisdom and experience of decades reading, discussing, analyzing, and teaching the novel… Her insights on characterization, emotion, and the subconscious are carefully and thoughtfully embedded in her analysis of Crime and Punishment. Rather than allowing that analysis to provide all the answers, however, she focuses on the questions that it raises. This gives Dostoevsky’s reader, using the Guide, agency in their path through the text. … Martinsen, a brilliant editor and interlocutor who brought Dostoevsky scholars together in conversation, has brought these connections to bear throughout the Guide, in mentions of others’ work in the text, the work’s careful footnotes, her overview of contemporary scholarship, and, finally, its considered bibliography. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide is a project Martinsen saw to completion during the final months of her life and it is truly a gift for all teachers and readers of Dostoevsky’s novel.”

— Katherine Bowers, University of British Columbia, Russian Review (October 2022: Vol. 81, No. 4)

“The complexity of Dostoevsky’s writing is… explored in a readable and rigorous manner in Deborah Martinsen’s Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide. Martinsen’s book follows the plot of Crime and Punishment, revealing the themes and issues explored, the multiple echoes throughout the novel and the various perspectives open to the characters. … Martinsen’s precise analysis deftly avoids any suggestion of a simplistic resolution to the novel’s complexity.”

— Llewellyn Brown, Forum for Modern Language Studies

“A posthumous release by one of this generation’s foremost experts on Fedor Dostoevskii, Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’: A Reader’s Guide by Deborah Martinsen is every bit as erudite as its author…Surprisingly, before this volume, there had been no comprehensive reader’s guide to Crime and Punishment, save for readings and analyses that appear as parts of larger works. An exquisite resource and teaching aid, every page of this guide is packed with detailed analysis, citing major research to date. It is written for general readers but also provides tips and suggestions for teaching the novel. The information presented is for the most part known to researchers, yet even the most seasoned reader of Dostoevskii will find the guide useful, whether as a refresher course or convenient reference tool.”

— Lonny Harrison, Slavic Re