A richly illustrated edition of a key work of world literature and at the same time the most famous detective story of all time, in which the author uncovers the darkest nooks and crannies of the soul of a murderer, a poor St. Petersburg law student, who contemplated, planned and committed the murder of an old moneylender, and not for purely selfish reasons. selfish motives or in affect, but from conviction, from a sense of superiority and intellectual pride, is complemented by more than seventy original paintings and drawings by the famous English painter and illustrator Dave McKean.
Dostoyevsky began writing his great gripping drama about crime, about the fight between good and evil, about conscience, punishment, redemption, and also about Russia and the Russian soul in 1865 abroad, not long after the death of his first wife and brother, when he found himself in financial trouble . The novel was first published as a sequel in the magazine Russkij vestnik, in 1866 it was published as a book. It was first published in Czech in 1883 in a translation by Josef Penížek, and in later years it was translated a total of five more times.