Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy (1899)

Name: Resurrection
Author: Leo Tolstoy

Prince Dmítri Ivánovitch Nekhlúdoff, serving on a jury in a Russian provincial court, recognises the defendant in a poisoning-and-robbery case as Katúsha Máslova, a woman he seduced and abandoned a decade earlier. Máslova, illegitimate ward-turned-servant of two elderly maiden ladies, had been drawn into an affair with the young Nekhlúdoff, made pregnant, and dismissed; her child died, and after a series of degrading domestic posts she drifted into prostitution in a licensed brothel. She now stands accused, with the servants Simeon Kartínkin and Euphémia Bótchkova, of poisoning and robbing the merchant Smelkóff, though she maintains she gave him only a sleeping powder, not knowing it was poison. The trial proceeds through inept, self-interested officials — a president eager to keep an assignation, a vain public prosecutor, a distracted jury — culminating in a catastrophic procedural blunder: the jury forgets to add "without intent to cause death" to its verdict, and Máslova is wrongly sentenced to four years' penal servitude in Siberia despite the jury's belief she was not guilty of murder. Watching her, Nekhlúdoff is forced to confront his own past: the summer at his aunts' estate when he and Katúsha fell innocently in love, his later return as a corrupted young officer who seduced her, and his shameful abandonment of her with a banknote thrust into her apron. He traces his moral decline to years of "believing others" instead of his own conscience — through hedonistic military life, an affair with a married woman, and drift toward a loveless marriage to Missy Korchágin. Confronted now with the concrete wreckage of his youthful sin, he undergoes what he calls a "cleansing of the soul," resolving to break off his entangling relationships, renounce his unjust inherited landholdings, hire an advocate (Fanárin) to appeal Máslova's sentence, and seek her out to confess his guilt and make amends — even, he tells himself, by marrying her if necessary. Meanwhile Máslova, exhausted and disbelieving of the sentence, returns to her overcrowded, foul prison cell among thieves, an incendiary, an infanticide, and other convicts, where she is comforted with tobacco and vodka by cellmates like Korabléva and Theodosia, still unaware that the man on the jury who so unsettled her was her original seducer.

By Leo Tolstoy · First published 1899 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Social Critique, Philosophical Fiction · 60 chapters · 207,072 words

First lines

Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.

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Resurrection is listed on Textopian as a novel by Leo Tolstoy, dated 1899 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Date: 1899 CE
Language: English
Genres: Literary Fiction, Social Critique, Philosophical Fiction, Historical Fiction, Religious Fiction
Length: 207,072 words
Structure: 129 chapters, 3,506 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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Genres

Literary Fiction — The novel explores deep philosophical and moral questions, focusing on the human condition and personal transformation.
Social Critique — It addresses social issues such as class disparity, justice, and the legal system in Russia.
Philosophical Fiction — The narrative delves into existential themes and the search for meaning in life.
Historical Fiction — Set in 19th-century Russia, it reflects the historical context and societal norms of the time.