Crime and Punishment tells how Raskolnikov, a poor former student from St. Petersburg, kills a pawnbroker and her sister with an ax to test a theory, is surrounded by his own conscience and by an examining magistrate, confesses, and serves a sentence of hard labor in Siberia.
In Part One, during a July of stifling heat, Raskolnikov rehearses a visit to the home of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, overhears in a tavern the drunken civil servant Marmeladov talk about his daughter Sonia, and reads his mother's letter announcing that his sister Dunya is engaged to the businessman Luzhin. He dreams of a mare beaten to death and wakes up ready to give up, but he overhears by chance that the old woman will be alone at seven in the evening the next day. He kills Alyona Ivanovna and, when her sister Lizaveta arrives unexpectedly, kills her too.
From Part Two to Part Four, his body delivers what his head denies: he hides the theft under a stone without looking at what is in the purse, falls ill, and is looked after by his friend Razumikhin. The magistrate Porfiry Petrovich discusses with him the article in which he divided men into ordinary and extraordinary, and surrounds him without any proof. Svidrigailov, Dunya's former employer, appears and says the two of them are birds of a feather. Dunya breaks off her engagement to Luzhin, and Raskolnikov asks Sonia to read the resurrection of Lazarus.
In Parts Five and Six, Raskolnikov confesses to Sonia, who tells him to kiss the ground and say aloud that he killed. Katerina Ivanovna, Sonia's stepmother, dies; Svidrigailov kills himself; Porfiry tells him it was he and proposes that he give himself up. He says goodbye to his family, kisses the ground in a square, and confesses at the police station. The Epilogue takes him to Siberia, where Sonia follows him, and it ends with the narrator announcing that another story begins, that of his renewal, which the book does not tell.