Resurrection

byLeo Tolstoy, Louise Maude (Translator), Andrew Kahn (Introducer)

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A nobleman faces the consequences of his youthful wrongdoing when the girl he seduced and abandoned some years earlier is put on trial in a murder case. Initially conceived as a love story, Tolstoy’s last novel, published in 1899, is a dark masterpiece in which the whole of Imperial Russian society is tried and found wanting. Resurrection moves from the salons and country estates of the aristocracy to courtrooms and government offices, brothels and prisons; from Moscow and St Petersburg by road, rail and route march to the penal settlements of Siberia. Its pages are peopled with convicts and gaolers, revolutionaries and religious sectaries, soldiers, labourers and lawyers, peasants, priests and prostitutes. While for Prince Nekhlyudov and Katusha Maslova salvation through love proves problematic, the journey into exile becomes one of self-discovery and spiritual transformation.

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The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

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Sweetness and light among shame and confusion. The greatest of all novels is Leo Tolstoy's final novel, Resurrection. Its effect upon a reader is immense and immediate.
Independent

In Resurrection … the return to the land, as the physical correlative to the rebirth of the soul, is beautifully rendered…The sun glimmers on the river, the colt nuzzles, and the pastoral scene enforces on Nekhlyudov the full realization that the morality of urban life is founded on injustice… The account of the eastward transportation of the prisoners is handled with a breadth of design and aliveness which transcend any programmatic purpose. When Tolstoy opened his eyes on actual scenes and events … his hand moved with matchless artistry.
George Steiner

The greatest of all novels is Leo Tolstoy's final novel, Resurrection. Its effect upon a reader is immense and immediate. Even after eight readings of various translations, I continue to feel its spell and admire its complexity… This brilliant, troubling novel at first out-sold Tolstoy's earlier novels, even War and Peace. It was criticized for its outspoken contents. It remains a grand panorama of discontent
Brian Aldiss, Independent

About Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Tula province. He studied at the University of Kazan, then led a life of pleasure until 1851 when he joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus. He established his reputation as a writer with The Sebastopol Sketches (1855-6). After a period in St Petersburg and abroad, he married, had thirteen children, managed his vast estates in the Volga Steppes and wrote War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life, and in 1901 he was excommuincated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramatic flight from home, at the railway station of Astapovo.

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