Crime and Punishment Literature Tour: following the steps of Raskolnikov (please book this tour well in advance)…
This tour is based on the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel “Crime and Punishment”. Born in Moscow, Dostoevsky became known as a St Petersburg writer. He studied to be a military engineer and fell in with the Petrashevsky Circle of socialist revolutionaries in St Petersburg.
After being condemned to death and reprieved at the last minute, Dostoevsky was exiled to Omsk in Siberia for four years. When he retuned he wrote “Memories from a Dead House” about his Siberian experience.
All Dostoevsky’s novels were written by commission. He took his subject matter from popular melodramas and sensational newspaper stories and wrote about them with the methods of psychological realism, a form he pioneered.
His greatest novel, Crime and Punishment, tells the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished former student who murders an old woman – a pawnbroker, and feels such guilt that by the time he is finally brought to justice he welcomes it. All events of the novel happened in St Petersburg, so with open book in our hands we will follow the steps of the main character!
If time permits (and upon your wish) we will visit the house where Dostoevsky last lived and died (it is now a museum) and the place of his eternal resting.