Join the 2024 Crime and Punishment Read-along
Introducing the 2024 slow read of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
Introducing my read-along of Dostoyevsky’s epic crime thriller, Crime and Punishment.
It’s a slow read lasting the duration of 2024. We will read one chapter a week and finish at the end of the year. It began on 18 March on The StoryGraph and, as I write this introduction, it now has 87 participants.
Substack offers more features and will give me more scope for creating valuable content with linked pages of chapter summaries, cast of characters and translation comparison notes, so I’m opening it up here while keeping the StoryGraph read-along going and providing regular updates on my BookTube channel.
As this Substack is launching seven weeks after The StoryGraph read-along, it will start from scratch and run behind the The StoryGraph. So the slow read will run at one chapter a week from 29 April 2024 – 9 February 2025. Each new week will begin on Mondays. You may, of course, read at your own pace and join in any time you like!
This newsletter is free. If you’d like to support me, please share and recommend this novel to anyone you think would enjoy reading it at a nice, slow pace.
Who am I?
I’m Cams Campbell, a middle-aged man on a Scottish island who loves books.
I have a degree in Russian language and literature from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and a Masters in translation and interpreting from the University of Bradford. I worked as a translator for 12 years before I moved to a Scottish island and bought a post office in 2008. I haven’t used Russian since—until now!
My undergraduate degree was a five-year course, starting in 1993, and I read many Russian classics and poetry during that time, some in Russian but most in translation. The novels that have remained in my mind are Oblomov, The Master and Margarita, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and Dead Souls. I read War and Peace and Dead Souls in Russian; the rest in translation.
Why Crime and Punishment, and Why Now?
I bought Crime and Punishment at the end of 2023 as a Christmas present. I hadn’t read it since uni, so I cheekily read it — the McDuff translation in the Penguin Clothbound Classics editions — before wrapping it up. I enjoyed it so much that I decided I would like to read it in Russian — only my Russian is now so rusty that it would be very slow.
Okay, so how about allowing a year? Well, that sounded achievable as long as I were to read a translation alongside. Which one, though? Ah, yes, they’re all quite different. Then I thought, ‘I could compare them.’
I would have appreciated a comparison as a student, and I’m sure others would find it useful. Plus, it would help me improve my Russian comprehension.
So I decided to go for it. I bought six translations in paperback. I already had another one on Kindle, and also had the Russian text in physical and Kindle. And I have a Russian audiobook version. I was ready. I set it up on The StoryGraph, announced it on YouTube and was bowled over by the positive response. As I write this, I’m seven chapters in and it’s already proving to be a very rewarding experience.
Why Substack?
I was recently directed to Simon Haisell’s Footnotes and Tangents Substack by a comment on one of my YouTube videos. He’s hosting a slow read-along of War and Peace for the second year in a row. Last year, it was on Instagram; this year, it’s on Substack. And wow - what an incredible resource! I signed up on the spot and am now playing catch up, reading two chapters a day until I catch up somewhere around August, when I can slow down to one chapter a week.
I’d love to create a resource like that for Crime and Punishment. I know that it would enhance my reading if I were to write more content about the novel, and it would be really fun to have other readers enjoy the novel with me.
I offer my thanks to Simon for showing me how to level-up my own read-along. I like to think that I’m stealing like an artist, to quote another of my favourite Substack creators, Austin Kleon, who literally wrote the book on that!
Which Translation
That’s the age-old question. If you already have one on the shelf, then read that one. Honestly, they’re all readable. If you’d like to compare before buying, my YouTube videos offer some insight into how the eight translators render certain parts of the text in different ways. I will be providing translation commentary in my regular updates as this slow read progresses, but for now you can check the spreadsheet of translation points I’ve made up to the end of Part 1. It’s available here:
I’ll be keeping the spreadsheet up-to-date as I go, as it’s a simpler way for me to keep track.
In short, the Constance Garnett translation is literal and uses 19th-century idiom, vocabulary and syntax. The English becomes more modern with each translation’s publication, ending with Roger Cockrell’s in 2022. If you’re looking for a US English translation, then Michael R. Katz’ is the one to choose.
The translations I’m comparing are:
Constance Garnett (1914)
Jessie Coulson (1953)
David McDuff (1991)
Pevear and Volokhonsky (1992)
Oliver Ready (2014)
Nicolas Pasternak Slater (2017)
Michael R. Katz (2018)
Roger Cockrell (2022)
How do I join?
Subscribe here on Substack to get the updates in your email inbox.
Turn on Notifications for Crime and Punishment. They will be turned off by default:
Or sign up for The StoryGraph and join the read-along there if you’d rather not have email updates but would still like to join the conversation. Note that The StoryGraph read-along is seven weeks ahead of this one and finishes at the end of 2024.
Support me by using Affiliate Codes
If you’re going to buy the book online and would like to support this project, please use one of my affiliate codes. I’ve localised the Amazon links using a service called Genius Link, so it should take you to your country’s local Amazon shopfront.
I also have an affiliate account with bookshop.org, a company that supports independent booksellers.
Amazon (Localised)
Bookshop.org
These links are single lists of all the translations