Which Russian author wrote 'Crime and Punishment'?

The Russian author who wrote Crime and Punishment was Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novel first appeared in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in 1866 and was published as a separate book the following year.

Its central character, Rodion Raskolnikov, is a poor former student in Saint Petersburg who convinces himself that an extraordinary person might be morally justified in committing a crime. After a murder, however, psychological guilt and fear become as important as the legal consequences. Dostoevsky uses the investigation and Raskolnikov’s relationships to examine morality, poverty, faith, and redemption.

Readers sometimes confuse Dostoevsky with Leo Tolstoy because both are major nineteenth-century Russian novelists, but they wrote very different works. Crime and Punishment is one of Dostoevsky’s best-known novels, alongside The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and Notes from Underground.