Raskolnikov: Murder with an Axe

Raskolnikov: Murder with an Axe – a novel This novel is an imaginative re-creation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. After killing the old pawnbroker, Ilyona Ivanovna, and her sister, Lizabeta, the young student, Raskolnikov, is haunted by the savagery of the double-murder. As he tosses and turns in his misery – reviewing his situation, his motives and his view of himself as an "Extraordinary Man" – Raskolnikov’s preconscious mind forms the image-patterns by which he seeks to understand what he has done. The Making of Murder with an Axe – a reflective journal This journal records my reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form. Planning Murder with an Axe – a planning notebook During the writing of the novel, I kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form. The Project Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the tenth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which I am exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century.