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60 free Crime and Punishment trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in a panic of debt, dictating a second novel to a stenographer at the same time, and it came out as the literary sensation of its year. This quiz walks through the whole book: Raskolnikov's theory of the extraordinary man, the two murders, the feverish days that follow, the investigator's cat-and-mouse interviews, Sonya's reading of Lazarus, Luzhin's planted banknote, the pistol shot that misses, the confession and the Siberian epilogue. It also covers the things a first reading skips: what the Russian title literally means, why the hero's surname signals a man divided, how the book was drafted in the first person and rewritten in the third, the critics who fought over it, and the long tail of adaptations from Peter Lorre and John Hurt to Bresson's Pickpocket, Kaurismäki's Helsinki and Osamu Tezuka's manga. It is written for students, book-club readers and anyone who has finished the novel and wants to check what stuck. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its protagonist and its author, and each question shows the sentence that supports it once you have answered.
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Q 01In which literary journal was Crime and Punishment first published, in twelve monthly instalments?
The Russian Messenger
The same journal was the outlet for Turgenev and Tolstoy; Dostoevsky had never published in it before, having feuded with its editor in the early 1860s.
Q 02In which year did the serialised novel run from January to December?
1866
The first part appeared in the January issue and the last in December, and Dostoevsky was writing under intense deadline pressure the whole way.
Q 03Before dropping out, what subject had Raskolnikov been studying?
Law
His loyal friend from university had studied the same subject, and their shared background gives the pair's arguments about crime a professional edge.
Q 04What weapon does Raskolnikov steal to carry out the murder?
An axe
He takes it from the caretaker's room in his own building, one of many small strokes of luck that let him get in and out unseen.
Q 05What is the trade of the old woman Raskolnikov plans to rob and kill?
Pawnbroker
He first visits her flat on the pretext of leaving a watch as security, a dry run that lets him study the layout.
Q 06Who is the unplanned second victim of the murders?
Lizaveta, her half-sister
She simply walks in on the scene, and her death shatters the neat logic of killing one 'useless' person for the greater good.
Q 07Where does Raskolnikov hide the items he stole?
Under a large rock in an empty yard
He realises with humiliation that he has never even counted the money in the purse he took.
Q 08Why is Raskolnikov summoned to the police station the morning after the murders?
A debt notice from his landlady
The summons is pure coincidence, but when the officers start discussing the murders he collapses in a faint and draws their attention.
Q 09Which loyal university friend nurses Raskolnikov through his delirium and later marries his sister Dunya?
Razumikhin
His name plays on razum, the Russian word for sense or reason, and he jokes that it is really Vrazumikhin, 'one who brings people to their senses'.
Q 10How does Sonya's father, the drunkard Marmeladov, die?
He is struck by a carriage
Raskolnikov carries the dying man home and gives the family his last money for the funeral.
Q 11Which Gospel story does Sonya read aloud to Raskolnikov?
The raising of Lazarus
The passage from John foreshadows Raskolnikov's own resurrection from the spiritual death of his crime.
Q 12Which investigator pursues Raskolnikov through psychological cat-and-mouse rather than evidence?
Porfiry Petrovich
He never makes a direct accusation, preferring insinuation and irony to provoke a confession, and later drops the games to urge Raskolnikov to confess for his own good.
Q 13What was the title of the article Raskolnikov published months earlier, which the investigator brings up?
'On Crime'
Q 21How many rubles does Dunya's former employer give Sonya so she can follow Raskolnikov?
3,000
It is the same sum his late wife had left Dunya in her will.
Q 22What sentence does Raskolnikov receive for the two murders?
Eight years of penal servitude
The court is lenient because he confessed fully at a time when another man had already claimed the crime, and because of his mental state at the time.
Q 23What happens to Raskolnikov's mother, Pulkheria Alexandrovna, after his sentencing?
She falls ill and dies
The truth about her son was hidden from her, but in her final illness she hints that she understood more than anyone had told her.
The article argues that rare individuals have the right to 'step across' moral and legal boundaries if those boundaries obstruct a great idea.
Q 14Which historical figure does Raskolnikov invoke as the model of a man entitled to transgress moral law?
Napoleon
The murder is partly a test of whether he belongs to that 'extraordinary' class, and his collapse afterwards answers the question.
Q 15What drives Mikolka the painter to falsely confess to the murders?
His sect holds it virtuous to suffer for another's crime
His confession bursts into the investigator's office at the exact moment a hidden witness was about to be produced, and it forces Raskolnikov's release.
Q 16What does Dunya's fiancé Luzhin plant on Sonya to frame her as a thief?
A 100-ruble banknote
He stages the accusation at the Marmeladovs' funeral banquet, hoping to disgrace Sonya and drive a wedge between Raskolnikov and his family.
Q 17Who exposes Luzhin's attempt to frame Sonya, having seen him slip the money into her pocket?
His roommate Lebezyatnikov
The witness had assumed at the time that he was watching an act of anonymous charity.
Q 18Who overhears Raskolnikov's confession to Sonya from the room next door?
Svidrigailov
He later taunts Raskolnikov by quoting his own words back at him, and uses the secret to try to pressure Dunya.
Q 19When Dunya fires a pistol at her former employer and narrowly misses, what does he do?
Urges her to reload and try again
Crushed by her hatred, he then tells her to leave; it is the last time they see each other.
Q 20How does Dunya's former employer die?
Kills himself in a public place
He spends his last night in a miserable hotel and acts the following morning, having first arranged money for the Marmeladov orphans.
Q 24The Russian word Prestupleniye in the original title literally translates as what?
A stepping across
The image of crime as crossing a boundary, with its religious sense of transgression, is lost in the English word.
Q 25The surname Raskolnikov derives from the Russian raskolnik, meaning what?
Schismatic
The word traditionally referred to the Old Believers who split from the Russian Orthodox Church, and it marks the hero as a man divided against himself.
Q 26The first name Rodion comes from Greek and indicates an inhabitant of which island?
Rhodes
His mother calls him by the affectionate diminutive Rodya.
Q 27Into how many parts, plus an epilogue, is the novel divided?
Six
Critic Edward Wasiolek saw the structure as a 'flattened X': the proud, rational hero of the first half gives way to the humbled, irrational one of the second, with the turn at the exact midpoint.
Q 28From which narrative perspective is the finished novel told?
Third-person omniscient
Dostoevsky first drafted it as a first-person memoir and diary, and only recast it in the third person in November 1865, rewriting from scratch.
Q 29Which other novel was Dostoevsky contracted to finish for Stellovsky while writing Crime and Punishment?
The Gambler
He dictated it to a stenographer in 26 days to meet the deadline, and married her the following year.
Q 30Which stenographer helped Dostoevsky through the crush of deadlines and later became his wife?
Anna Snitkina
She was twenty years old and a pupil of the Petersburg stenographer Pavel Olkhin when she took the job.