Super goede voorlezer, maakt dat het boek nooit saai is, ondanks de lange monologen.

Excellent book. The narrator was great, also for non native English speakers like me.

This is a narrated version of the classic well worth recommending (over the others?). The animated performer never tires of the diatribe and drives the many lengthy monologues along splendidly, complete with ranting and raving, much exhilirated chuckling and many a consumptive coughing fit. Even for British-English ears the American accent is suited to the text.*-* Eventhough it’s ony 1866, there is much modernity to astound you! Aside the overall tone of pre-Revolution Socialist ideology, including equal rights for both genders, men go to gyms, smoking is considered terrible for your health, women are encouraged to study not marry, and temporary insantity is already considered a mitigating circumstance in the perpetratrion of crimes of passion. There is a hint of (a Nietzschian type of) anarchism besides for the eager listener; where Doestoevsky lets the letter of the law fall in upon itself to make for a system no less arbitrary, banal and monomaniacial. What makes true democracy? What rule, which regulations, and above all what morality can make for a just and happy society? Note also how knowledgeable Dosoyevsky is on the subject of forensic science, criminal psychology and the impact of socio-economic destitution on moral integrity, which removes much of the alien space often found by the modern western reader in pre-Revolutionary Russian times and culture. *-* There is much drinking in this novel, and a lot of delirous talk during fevers and fainting spells; but in vino veritas est, and we are shown the morally inert and irresponsible, but asked to sympathise with their point of view, aswell - at least with its origin. Furthermore, we are invited to agree that we all go a little crazy some of the time; and by what standards do we decide when we go too far? *-* Don’t expect a romantic story or a thrilling crime novel. But also not a political manifesto with clear-cut philosophical arguments. Although there is much bustling about and many encounters between folks in this novel serve only to set up more (pre) Existentialist debate, there is a strong red thread, clear and vibrant motifs, and we remain keen to discover how a criminal’s conscience will bear out after the crime. We sort of like (the very young!) Roshkolnikov, or we can relate to this impatient and arrogant student, and for the elder reader a catharsis for previous harsher stands might take place through this! It is, in that sense, not at all the difficult, all too Russian rambling novel I always held it to be. It’s not a Tolstoy! But a rich and almost timeless Dostoevskii, which deserves to be reread and studied even more closely in print as a kind of psychological premise that can develop either way: into the ***** (who’s definitely not mad) and the Double (way beyond temporary insanity).

Exceptionally good piece of fiction but I would not advice this narrator. Makes to much of a play of the book.