Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov is a broke ex-student in St. Petersburg who convinces himself that a superior man is allowed to kill a worthless person for a greater good. He acts on it, and the rest of the book is the theory collapsing under the weight of his own guilt. Dostoevsky spends almost no time on the crime and all of it on the mind around it, in long fevered conversations and arguments that never resolve cleanly. Read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. It keeps the awkward, urgent rush of the Russian instead of smoothing it into polite English.