Join the Restless virtual classics book club as we tackle one for the ages: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Lauded as one of the most gripping thrillers in literature, Crime and Punishment endures as a biting social critique and a profound psychological portrait.
We will divide our reading over two meetings, focusing on Parts I, II, and III in February, and Parts IV, V, and VI in March. Publisher and professor Ilan Stavans will lead the discussion. Come test your mettle and share opinions; there are no wrong answers! In the words of Rodion Raskolnikov: “To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
If you’d like a bit of background reading before our discussion, David Denby’s article “The Lockdown Lessons of ‘Crime and Punishment’” for The New Yorker reflects on the experience of reading Dostoevsky in a virtual world.
Parts I, II, and III
When: Wednesday, February 24 at 8 pm ET
Where: The New York Public Library via Zoom. Please register through the New York Public Library (you don’t need to be a patron to register).
Parts IV, V, and VI
When: Wednesday, March 31 at 8 pm ET
Where: The New York Public Library via Zoom. Please register here (you don’t need to be a patron of the New York Public Library to register).
About the Host
Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast."