Book of the week: The Sinner and the Saint by Kevin Birmingham

Kevin Birmingham explores Fyodor Dostoevsky’s inspiration for Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1861
Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1861
(Image credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Enver Hoxha’s communist Albania was the “last Stalinist outpost of the 20th century”, said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times. In Free, her often “astonishing” memoir, Lea Ypi brings to life what it was like to grow up there in the 1980s. It was a world where “certain objects carried extraordinary weight”: old Coca-Cola cans, for instance, were eagerly bought and sold; stones were used as placeholders in queues that might remain static for days.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up