It’s hard for a novelist to make a double axe-murderer sympathetic, especially when his victims are an old woman and her mentally disabled half-sister. In addition to which, this murderer is a remorseless antisemite who rationalises his motives and considers himself to be above society. A second character is an alcoholic whose addiction has bankrupted his family and forced his teenage daughter into prostitution. Surely the novelist has created a hellscape from which absolution is impossible. Yet redemption for these characters is exactly what Fyodor Dostoevsky accomplishes in his masterpiece Crime and Punishment.
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