Book excerpt: This Bilingual English-Russian Edition includes in original famous novel "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett in 1914 and illustrated (11 illustrations) by Maria Tsaneva. The text is arranged in parallel English-Russian chapters (the Russian are marked Italic). This is a great way to read and listen to both English and Russian text.You can read the entire chapter in English or in Russian, or you can follow along as each individual English paragraph is paired with the corresponding Russian paragraph. The text is relatively not very simple, vocabulary and grammar wise, so for beginners this should be a great challenge. Crime and Punishment is a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve parts during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. Crime and Punishment is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia and the first great novel of his "golden" period of writing. The novel focuses on the moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless vermin. He also commits this murder to test his own hypothesis that some people are naturally capable of such things, and even have the right to do them. He justifies his actions by comparing himself with Napoleon Bonaparte, believing that murder is permissible in pursuit of a "higher" purpose.