Raskolnikov, a poor student in Petersburg, kills a pawnbroker with an axe, believing himself to be a superior man beyond ordinary morality. Dostoevsky spends the rest of the novel following his psychological disintegration. The murder happens early; the punishment is the novel itself, the unbearable pressure of conscience that Raskolnikov cannot escape. The prose is feverish, the city oppressive, the philosophical questions relentless. Sonia, the prostitute who loves him, offers a way out that is also a kind of death. No novel has ever been more claustrophobic.