Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."

Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in a garret in St. Petersburg, develops a theory that extraordinary men have a right to commit crimes for the greater good. To test his theory and solve his financial woes, he brutally murders an unscrupulous pawnbroker. The novel charts his descent into paranoia and guilt, his cat-and-mouse game with the detective Porfiry Petrovich, and his path to redemption through the love of the virtuous prostitute Sonya.

Dostoevsky's psychological thriller is one of the supreme achievements of world literature. It explores the dangers of rationalism and nihilism, and the necessity of suffering for spiritual rebirth.