
The Sinner and the Saint
Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $22.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Robert Petkoff
-
By:
-
Kevin Birmingham
About this listen
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * One of The East Hampton Star's 10 Best Books of the Year
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Most Dangerous Book, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
The Sinner and the Saint is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story - and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him, and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic.
The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a Western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov.
Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good.
The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer to dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love.
Dostoevsky's great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky's career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.
©2021 Kevin Birmingham (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Most Dangerous Book
- The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses
- By: Kevin Birmingham
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce's years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain.
-
-
Excellent and Informative
- By Chris Reich on 06-23-14
By: Kevin Birmingham
-
Notes from a Dead House
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From renowned translators Richard Pevear and Lindsay Volokhonsky comes a new translation - certain to become the definitive version - of the first great prison memoir, a fictionalized account of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life-changing penal servitude in Siberia.
-
-
FYODORange is the New Black
- By Darwin8u on 07-13-15
-
The House of the Dead
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Completed six years after Dostoyevsky's own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to 10 years of hard labor for murdering his wife.
-
-
most accessible dostoevsky book.
- By Calemos on 01-04-22
-
The Double and The Gambler
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The two strikingly original short novels brought together here - in new translations by award-winning translators - were both literary gambles of a sort for Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelgänger. Written 20 years later under the pressure of crushing debt, The Gambler is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction.
-
-
Exciting
- By Tad Davis on 02-25-19
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others
-
Dostoevsky in Love
- An Intimate Life
- By: Alex Christofi
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dostoevsky's life was marked by brilliance and brutality. Sentenced to death as a young revolutionary, he survived mock execution and Siberian exile to live through a time of seismic change in Russia, eventually being accepted into the Tsar's inner circle. Somehow, amidst all this, he found time to write short stories, journalism, and novels. In Dostoevsky in Love, Alex Christofi weaves carefully chosen excerpts of the author's work with the historical context to form an illuminating and often surprising whole.
-
-
I love the book and narrator
- By Amy on 04-23-22
By: Alex Christofi
-
Paper Bullets
- Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis
- By: Jeffrey H. Jackson
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paper Bullets is the first book to tell the history of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home on the British Channel Island of Jersey.
-
-
Outstanding, amazing history
- By Dan P on 03-24-24
-
The Most Dangerous Book
- The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses
- By: Kevin Birmingham
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce's years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain.
-
-
Excellent and Informative
- By Chris Reich on 06-23-14
By: Kevin Birmingham
-
Notes from a Dead House
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From renowned translators Richard Pevear and Lindsay Volokhonsky comes a new translation - certain to become the definitive version - of the first great prison memoir, a fictionalized account of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life-changing penal servitude in Siberia.
-
-
FYODORange is the New Black
- By Darwin8u on 07-13-15
-
The House of the Dead
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Completed six years after Dostoyevsky's own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to 10 years of hard labor for murdering his wife.
-
-
most accessible dostoevsky book.
- By Calemos on 01-04-22
-
The Double and The Gambler
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The two strikingly original short novels brought together here - in new translations by award-winning translators - were both literary gambles of a sort for Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelgänger. Written 20 years later under the pressure of crushing debt, The Gambler is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction.
-
-
Exciting
- By Tad Davis on 02-25-19
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others
-
Dostoevsky in Love
- An Intimate Life
- By: Alex Christofi
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dostoevsky's life was marked by brilliance and brutality. Sentenced to death as a young revolutionary, he survived mock execution and Siberian exile to live through a time of seismic change in Russia, eventually being accepted into the Tsar's inner circle. Somehow, amidst all this, he found time to write short stories, journalism, and novels. In Dostoevsky in Love, Alex Christofi weaves carefully chosen excerpts of the author's work with the historical context to form an illuminating and often surprising whole.
-
-
I love the book and narrator
- By Amy on 04-23-22
By: Alex Christofi
-
Paper Bullets
- Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis
- By: Jeffrey H. Jackson
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paper Bullets is the first book to tell the history of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home on the British Channel Island of Jersey.
-
-
Outstanding, amazing history
- By Dan P on 03-24-24
-
Super-Infinite
- The Transformations of John Donne
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children, and was often ill and in pain.
-
-
Oh but the narration…
- By David Benjamin on 01-01-23
-
Homer Box Set: Iliad & Odyssey
- By: Homer, W. H. D. Rouse - translator
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 25 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.
-
-
Oddball Translation
- By Joel Jenkins on 05-11-17
By: Homer, and others
-
Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
-
-
fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
-
Burning Boy
- The Life and Work of Stephen Crane
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 35 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age 28.
-
-
My New Go To - Paul Auster.
- By James Bernard Kane on 01-17-23
By: Paul Auster
-
The Story of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Story of Russia is about how the Russians defined themselves―and repeatedly reinvented such definitions along the way. Moving from Russia’s agrarian beginnings in the first millennium to subsequent periods of monarchy, totalitarianism, and perestroika, all the way up to Vladimir Putin and his use of myths of Russian history to bolster his regime, celebrated historian Orlando Figes examines the ideas that have guided the country’s actions.
-
-
Almost perfect…
- By Samantha Dispenzieri on 02-21-23
By: Orlando Figes
-
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
- An Experiment in Literary Investigation
- By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
- Narrated by: Ignat Solzhenitsyn
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one abridged volume (authorized by the author). Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.
-
-
Mandatory reading in Russia, not USA. Why?
- By Arlon James on 11-07-20
-
Jewish Space Lasers
- The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories
- By: Mike Rothschild
- Narrated by: Jon Vertullo
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2018 Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to social media to share her suspicions that the California wildfires were started by 'space solar generators' which were funded by powerful, mysterious backers. Instantly, thousands of people rallied around her, blaming the fires on "Jewish space lasers" and, ultimately, the Rothschild family. For more than 200 years, the name "Rothschild" has been synonymous with two things: great wealth, and conspiracy theories about what they're "really doing" with it.
-
-
Overall well done, but strays off course
- By Jeremy and Maureen Lawson on 02-17-24
By: Mike Rothschild
-
The Books of Jacob
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gilli Messer
- Length: 35 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
-
-
Dense & Difficult But Rewarding
- By Nick O. on 02-28-22
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
James Joyce
- Revised Edition
- By: Richard Ellman
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 37 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.
-
-
Not Unabridged, Strictly Speaking
- By Charles B on 07-24-17
By: Richard Ellman
-
Solenoid
- By: Mircea Cărtărescu, Sean Cotter - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 34 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.
-
-
Our Universal Phantasmagoria
- By Isaac Linder on 03-11-24
By: Mircea Cărtărescu, and others
-
Crime and Punishment
- Penguin Classics
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oliver Ready
- Narrated by: Don Warrington
- Length: 25 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's 'psychological record of a crime' gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders alone through the slums of St. Petersburg, deliriously imagining himself above society's laws. But when he commits a random murder, only suffering ensues.
-
-
Best translation on audible – mediocre narrator
- By Fantod on 04-29-20
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
-
Germany, 1923
- Hyperinflation, Hitler's Pusch and Democracy in Crisis
- By: Volker Ullrich, Jefferson Chase - translator
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Bestselling author Volker Ullrich presents a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced.
-
-
Interesting read about economics
- By molliet on 11-01-23
By: Volker Ullrich, and others
Critic reviews
"With The Sinner and the Saint, Kevin Birmingham has scored a hat trick, delivering three biographies in one book - expertly chronicling the lives of the man who wrote Crime and Punishment and the murderer who inspired the tale, and the fascinating evolution of the novel itself. Birmingham’s ingenious braided narrative offers an inspired new reading to those who already know and love Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, and serves as an indispensable guide for first time readers.” (Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast)
What listeners say about The Sinner and the Saint
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeffrey D
- 06-24-22
Interesting topic (Dostoevsky, that is)
The conceit of this book is that Dostoevsky was inspired, in part, by the career of the French criminal Lacenaire to write his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (which is to some extent true), and therefore it might be an entertaining and instructive idea to create a book by interleaving the story of Dostoevsky, the book, and Lacenaire. This sort of works. Lacenaire is interesting (there are the distressingly usual women writing passionate letters to this murderer in jail), but not that interesting. And the instalments of Lacenaire's story are a bit distracting and not always clearly relevant. It is Dostoevsky and Crime and Punishment that are truly interesting. Time spent on Lacenaire is perhaps not time well-spent.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Windy Man 83
- 01-21-23
Spectacular
Wow. I’ve written more on Dostoevsky on my Substack. But wow. This is a gorgeous, powerful book. The author very clearly values Dostoevsky as the highest of artists. Which he should. I’m currently rereading Crime and Punishment. The Sinner and the Saint truly opens the door to an intimate insider’s look into Dostoevsky’s personal and literary life and struggles. I recently read a biography about Gauguin; this book reminded me of that artist. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. You won’t regret it. It’s written almost like a novel.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 01-23-22
Best book about F.D.'s amazing journey
This was the most moving & insightful /compassionate/heartbreaking/page turning/great works of non fiction I ever experienced.Did not want it to end.Great narrator also especially.However:If you don't want to know about what it's like to live in mid-19th century St.Petersburg ; a primer on publishers; printers & writers ; censorship edicts ;money lenders & debtors & a dozen types of philosophical ideas that spread across Europe ;plus an absolute masterly description of what ;being a prisoner in Siberia really involved..Be warned;you may not like this book..On the other hand..If you are interested in that kind of history then this is IT.An unforgettable listening pleasure.Top Marks.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sandra Lorentzen
- 01-08-23
Illuminating background
After listening to all of Dostoyevsky’s major works, it was so great to get a context for his writing by learning about his life and times.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Paul Tretyak
- 07-27-23
Impeccable
I love Kevin Birmingham style and Robert Petkof did a wonderful job reading as well. Cannot recommend this enough for any literary fans.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Buretto
- 04-02-22
Probably need a re-read of C&P for full reaction
But for now, this book left me merely whelmed. One-third contextualization, a third Dostoevsky's travails in writing the book, and a third Cliff's Notes. Perhaps another read will provide a new perspective, but I'm not so sure.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful