The first time I read Crime and punishment, it took me two days to finish the 590 pages of my edition. It was unprecedented for me to read a book with such voracity. I remember that on a rainy Saturday, I started reading around 4 p.m.; when the sun came at 6 a.m. on Sunday, I was still with the book in my hands. Censored by the sun, I chose to sleep a few hours. When I woke up, I took the reading session that would shoot the book. But why my delight? What is so special about this book? It was Crime and punishment my first contact with Dostoevsky: I had never read any author who approached his psychological acuity. Reading Crime and Punishment I felt physically in Russia; I felt, terrified, a murderer and I felt, in curse, beset by guilt. For the first time I articulated and validated in mind nihilistic thoughts, which shone in an undeniable logic and showed me the relativity of morality. Pages later, all this falls apart, and Raskolnikov leads me with him to the abyss. Feverish, delirious, makes me feel on my skin the tension of guilt, the fear of persecution. And in the midst of darkness, desperate and repentant, he teaches me what redemption is; together with Sonia, he teaches me what is the flesh and what is the soul; and condemned, he teaches me the true value of things on earth. I closed the book decided: whatever happens, I am going to be a writer.

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