Oscar Wilde claimed that "Humiliated and Insulted" is not 'at all inferior to that other great masterpiece'; Friedrich Nietzsche is said to have wept over it. Its construction is that of an intricate detective novel interwoven with eternally topical themes. There is a new take on jealousy, radically different from Shakespeare's; and the reader is plunged into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma and above all of unrequited love and irreconcilable relationships.At the centre of the story is a young struggling author, a traumatised orphaned teenager, and a depraved aristocrat, who not only foreshadows the great figures of evil in Dostoevsky's later fiction but is a powerful and original presence in his own right. This new translation catches the verve and tumult of the original, which itself - in concept and execution - affords a refreshingly unfamiliar glimpse of the author. In structure it is more ordered, in plot and characterisation, more succinct and balanced than most of his later novels. The reader throughout is moved, shocked and above all - entertained, but never for a moment wearied.

陀思妥耶夫斯基（1821-1881），俄国19世纪文坛享有世界声誉的小说家，他的创作具有极其复杂、矛盾的性质。擅长心理剖析，尤其是揭示内心分裂。他的小说戏剧性强，情节发展快，接踵而至的灾难性事件往往伴随着复杂激烈的心理斗争和痛苦的精神危机，以此揭露资产阶级关系的纷繁复杂和矛盾重重，具有深刻的悲剧性。1846年发表处女作《穷人》， 1859年因参加革命活动被沙皇政府逮捕并流放西伯利亚。十年苦役流放回来后创作重点逐渐转向心理悲剧。《罪与罚》（1866）使作者获得世界声誉。主要作品有《双重人格》（1846）、《女房东》（1847）、《白昼》（1848）和《脆弱的心》（1848）、《群魔》（1872）、《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》（1880）等。