Resurrection

Resurrection is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, composed between 1889 and 1899. Ten years in the making and revised through six drafts, it is the crowning work of his later years and the summation of a lifetime's moral and artistic inquiry. The plot draws on a true case supplied by the prosecutor Koni: Nekhlyudov, a young aristocrat, seduces the maid Maslova at his aunt's estate; pregnant and then cast out, she sinks into prostitution. Years later, Maslova stands trial for robbery and murder, and Nekhlyudov, serving on the jury, recognizes the defendant as the woman he once wronged and is overcome with remorse. He moves heaven and earth to clear her name; when the appeal fails, he resolves to follow her to Siberian exile and proposes marriage as atonement. Amid suffering Maslova gradually rebuilds her self-respect and her faith, and in the end chooses to marry the revolutionary Simonson, while Nekhlyudov renounces his aristocratic life, gives his land to the peasants, and severs ties with high society. Each achieves a spiritual and moral "resurrection" in a different way. Through the intertwined fates of its two protagonists the novel unfolds a vast panorama of courtrooms, prisons, bureaucratic offices, the church, and the countryside, exposing the hypocrisy and corruption of Tsarist autocracy. Hailed as the high point of Russian critical realism, it is also a classic of world literature repeatedly recommended to secondary-school students by China's Ministry of Education.