Books by level / English books
Crime and Punishment: reading level, length and free edition
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a novel in English, in English translation. Our team rates it B2. It runs to 204,644 words with 9,587 different word forms, about 17–34 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.
- Author
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Language
- English
- Level
- B2
- Form
- novel
- Words
- 204,644
- Different word forms
- 9,587
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 3,349 / 5,700
- Reading time
- 17–34 h
- Free edition
- Standard Ebooks
Crime and Punishment tells the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, an ex-student who plans to murder a pawnbroker to test his theory of personality. Having accomplished the deed, Raskolnikov struggles with mental anguish while trying to both avoid the consequences and hide his guilt from his friends and family.
Is Crime and Punishment right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in Crime and Punishment, you need its 3,349 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 5,700. The median English B2 book in our table needs 3,747 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is typical for its level: number 7 of 19, easiest first.
A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.
Which words should you know before you start?
These are the words that Crime and Punishment uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.
- roubles 95
- stairs 78
- flat 77
- sofa 77
- drunk 76
- nonsense 72
- muttered 68
- clerk 56
- landlady 55
- porter 47
- sank 46
- stupid 44
- illness 42
- student 41
- lodging 39
How does it begin?
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S—— Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K—— bridge.
From the Standard Ebooks edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.
How long does it take to read?
| Words | 100 wpm | 150 wpm | 200 wpm | 250 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 204,644 | 34 h | 23 h | 17 h | 14 h |
Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?
Where can you read it for free?
The free edition is from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that proofreads and typesets public-domain books. Standard Ebooks releases its editions into the public domain in the United States under CC0 1.0; you can download it as EPUB, Kindle (AZW3) or KEPUB without signing up.
To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.
What to read next at B2
English books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- Dracula, Bram Stoker: 161,387 words, 3,383 forms for 95%
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald: 48,659 words, 3,508 forms for 95%
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley: 78,010 words, 3,747 forms for 95%
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen: 122,164 words, 2,425 forms for 95%
- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas: 463,374 words, 4,828 forms for 95%
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert: 116,535 words, 5,089 forms for 95%
See also all English books by level and books at B2 in all five languages.