Resurrection »

One of the great masters of the 19th-century novel, Tolstoy created a sweeping epic in War and Peace which folds together huge events in history and politics with the emotional lives of individuals. But it was his deeply spiritual outlook that made him an icon.

Resurrection combines a love story with a ferocious attack on the Russian regime. Prince Dmitrii Nekhliudov is a member of a jury trying Katiusha Maslova for murder. Before long, though, he puts himself on trial and condemns all of upper-class and official Russia. Meanwhile, once convicted, Maslova evolves from prostitute to revolutionary. In the stories of Maslova and other convicts, Leo Tolstoy depicts the hard lot of women and the disenfranchised in nineteenth-century tsarist Russia.