Crime and Punishment

Rodion Raskolnikov is a former law student scraping by in Saint Petersburg, and he has convinced himself of a theory: that certain crimes are justifiable if committed to clear the way for extraordinary men to do great things. When he acts on that belief and kills a pawnbroker, he expects the money to free him from poverty. Instead, he is consumed by confusion, paranoia and disgust, trapped in a reckoning with his own conscience that proves far harder to escape than the law. Dostoevsky's classic is a gripping descent into guilt and self-justification.