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Crime and Punishment, Feodor Dostoyevsky’s famous novel was first published in 1866 as a serial-novel in the literary journal The Russian Messenger, and later brought out in a single volume.
The protagonist of the play, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex student in St. Petersburg lives in a tiny, rented room in Saint Petersburg refusing all help, even from his friend Razumikhin. To eradicate his financial worries, he plots to murder and to rob an unpleasant elderly money-lender, Alëna. His intent for muder however goes beyond his personal motive for money. By executing a hated, unscrupulous pawnbroker, he hopes to rid the world of an evil. Raskolnikov carries out the murder, but in the process has to her half-sister Lizaveta also.
Raskolnikov however becomes psychologically affected by the murder, and ultimately he confesses his crime and is exiled to Siberia. Sonya, a prostitute with full of Christian virtues with whom he had fallen in love follows him, leading to hope sof his moral revival under her influence.