A Russian Novel Saved My Mind

When I was 19 years old, I was living with a roommate in a tiny apartment in St Petersburg, Russia, just steps from Senate Square, where the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment rambles about while in the throes of madness. I was perhaps not far from madness. I had traveled to “Piter”, as the locals call the city, to study Russian literature. But that semester, I hadn’t managed much studying.