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 as 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 an emphatic regeneration, the novel presents a mature panorama of human life, shot through with searing spiritual intensity.