Resurrection is Leo Tolstoy's final novel—a searing indictment of injustice, hypocrisy, and the corrupt institutions of 19th-century Russia.
Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov, a wealthy nobleman, serves on a jury and is horrified to recognize the woman on trial for murder: Katusha Maslova, a peasant girl he seduced and abandoned years ago. Convicted of a crime she did not commit, Maslova is sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia. Overwhelmed by guilt, Nekhlyudov follows her into exile, surrendering his estate and social position in a desperate attempt to atone for his sin and secure her pardon.
What follows is a panoramic journey through the grim machinery of czarist justice, the hollow rituals of the Orthodox Church, the squalor of peasant life, and the brutal reality of Russia's prison system. Along the way, Nekhlyudov's moral awakening forces him to question everything he once believed about privilege, power, and his own righteousness. Maslova, meanwhile, undergoes her own transformation—from a victim of circumstance to a woman who reclaims her dignity and learns to forgive.
First published in 1899, Resurrection was Tolstoy's last major work and his most overtly political. He intended the novel not merely as art but as a weapon—a "panoramic view of Russia" intended to expose "the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of the institutionalized church." Less sprawling than War and Peace, more focused than Anna Karenina, Resurrection delivers its moral force with relentless power.
This audiobook is based on the Project Gutenberg public domain text, translated from the Russian by Louise Maude—the English translation personally approved by Tolstoy himself.
Produced and narrated by AI Doushu, with AI assistance.
