In the sweltering slums of St. Petersburg, Rodion Raskolnikov, a brilliant, impoverished former student, broods alone in his cramped garret, half-starved and feverish with a dangerous idea: that certain extraordinary men stand above ordinary morality and may do terrible things in the name of a greater purpose. Convinced he is such a man, he fixes on a desperate plan to murder a cruel old pawnbroker and seize her money. But the deed itself proves to be only the beginning. Dostoevsky's towering 1866 novel opens as a young man crosses a line he can never step back over.