Resurrection

By: Leo Tolstoy

Narrated by: Neville Jason

When Prince Dmitri Nekhludov is called for jury duty on a murder case, he little knows how the experience will change his life. Faced with the accused, a prostitute, he recognizes Katusha, the young girl he seduced and abandoned many years before, and realizes his responsibility for the life of degradation she has been forced to lead. His determination to make amends leads him into the darkest reaches of the Tsarist prison system, and to the beginning of his spiritual regeneration.

Based on a true story, Tolstoy’s final novel is a deeply moving and compassionate tale of human frailty and reformation.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2012 Naxos AudioBooks

Same Mood, The Same Power, Resurrected

“The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”
- Tolstoy, Resurrection

While not as big or beautiful as Tolstoy's great, BIG novels (War and Peace, Anna Karenina), there is still something grand and beautiful about 'Resurrection'. The novel is basically a critique of both organized religion and the injustices of criminal law and justice. It tells the story of a noble (Nekhlyudov) who recognizes a woman (Maslova) he ruined in his youth while serving on a jury. Through careless mistakes, institutional inflexibility, and apathy, Maslova eventually is sentenced to live in Siberia.

The novel is the story of Nekhlyudov's journey of abandoning his old life (wealth, property, class) and following Maslova to Siberia. It is a story of Nekhlyudov's search for redemption from his past, his awaking to the reality of how the state and its bureaucracy crushes both the innocent and the poor, and a philosophical examination of how the fundamental's of Christianity are often overlooked by the State (and organized religion) when people lose sight of the very basic idea of loving other people.

While reading the novel I was constantly thinking of Ferguson. I was wondering how Tolstoy would approach the heavy incarceration rates of black Americans. It seems he would write a novel pretty close to the one he wrote in 1899. It is amazing to me how similar our times really are. Social injustice seems to always exist. That is why you can have Dickens, Tolstoy, Orwell, Sinclair, Baldwin, Steinbeck, etc., all writing about similar themes on different continents and in different eras and they all seem to capture the same mood with the same type of power.

Not a romance

Rebecca
A man’s spiritual journey reflecting that of Tolstoy himself at the end of his life.

Great book, narrator good but not for this book

I would love to hear this voice actor narrate a Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Beowulf or something of that such—he has the perfect voice for a fairy tale narrator.

Reading Russian tragedies is less his bag imho, though he did a serviceable job it wasn’t a match made in heaven. Great book though

One of Tolstoy's less known great novels

Tolstoy's last great novel. Transformation of a human person from a life of self-centeredness to authentic self-giving love.
My third time reading over a period of many years led me to the conclusion: even if Resurrection is not his greatest novel, it is my favorite and it is uniquely beautiful.

good story but heavy on Religion

Tolstoy creates a non-typical romance and intertwines it with Christian philosophy.
Still, the guilt of Nobility and enlightenment regarding views of peasant slavery makes an interesting backdrop.