Few characters in literature are more detestable than Mikolka. We meet him in Chapter 5 of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, a book I am currently reading for the 5th time in the fourth different translation (It was originally published in Russian in 1866). Mikolka shows up in a fever dream of the book’s protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, a young former student who drinks a little vodka on an empty stomach, goes to sleep under a tree, and slips into a nightmare. It remains one of the most famous chapters in the history of literature.