Dostoevsky, yes, it was him! He struck me, paralyzed me with Crime and Punishment. He forbade me to follow the fate of his hero Raskolnikov: To kill a second woman, this time an innocent one; to take the money and the jewels that would remind me of my crime... To fall prey to my own regrets, to blacken in a pit of guilt and end up in dungeons...

Then what? Better to run away, like a poor sucker, a stupid criminal. With bloody hands and empty pockets.

What nonsense!

Down with this Dostoevsky!

Down with Dostoevsky is a kind of Afghan Crime and Punishment, in which Rahimi, who previously received great attention with his book The Stone of Patience, questions his homeland Afghanistan, where death is rampant, crime, remorse and punishment. The novel is a work of Russian literature that interrogates the concepts of good and evil in contemporary Afghanistan, where reason has abandoned reason and the much felt presence of God soon turns into godlessness.