A prostitute stands accused of murder. Prince Nekhlyudov serves on the jury at her trial. He recognizes her as the innocent young girl he once loved, seduced and abandoned. The story is compelling, the telling of it is masterful and exuberant as only the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina could make it. But the setting of Resurrection is the underworld, and Tolstoy turns a highly critical eye on the law, the penal system, and above all, the Church.
With its theme of fallen man and emphatically non-Christian process of regeneration, the novel presents a mature panorama of Russian life, shot through with searing spiritual intensity.
