Anna Aslanyan

The crime which inspired Crime and Punishment

Kevin Birmingham examines the shocking murder committed by Pierre François Lacenaire in 1834 and how it came to preoccupy Dostoevsky decades later

‘Murder in the Passage du Cheval Rouge’. Pierre François Lacenaire’s brutal crime shook France in 1834, and his story was mirrored in many details in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece decades later. [Bridgeman Images]

  • The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky, a Crime and its Punishment

    Kevin Birmingham

    Allen Lane, pp. 432, £25

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