Crime and Punishment

I have contradictory feelings about Russian authors. I either love them (hello, Leo Tolstoi), or they’re the most boring thing I’ve ever read (thanks for that, Pasternak). 

Being Crime and Punishment a Russian classic I’ve postponed it for a while (better to think it will be amazing rather than have reality slap me in the face like with Dr Zhivago). 

Crime and Punishment is not a book that you devour in one go. It’s a book that you take your time to read it, to appreciate it and it needs time for its message to be interiorised, for its voice to whisper and for it to grow in you. It’s the kind of book you read in the morning and you’re reflecting on it throughout the day. 

Its beauty is not in the motives that drove him to commit a crime or in the legal punishment, but instead it’s the moral fight he keeps fighting day after day and the love that people around him have for him which enables him to become a better human.

It’s a heavy read, but a beautiful one.