Crime and Punishment begins in St. Petersburg during the hot summer of 1865. Raskolnikov, a failed student, is tormented by feelings of superiority -- how can he convince the world of his greatness? He decides to commit a justifiable murder, one that will both rid the world of a parasite (a moneylender)and prove that higher beings like himself need not be bound by conventional morality. All goes as planned until the moneylender's simple-minded sister comes home unexpectedly, just after the murder, and must be killed as well. The remainder of the novel tries to answer the question: after such brutality, what redemption? Three forces conspire to save Raskolnikov: a magistrate; a prostitute who loves him; and his own conscience, which he thought lost. Anticipating by almost twenty years Friedrich Nietzsche's concerns with power and the adequacy of Christian morality, Dostoevsky's novel has left its mark on fiction throughout the world.