Resurrection (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

Resurrection combines a love story with a ferocious attack on the Russian regime. Prince Dmitrii Nekhliudov is a member of a jury trying Katiusha Maslova for murder. Before long, though, he puts himself on trial and condemns all of upper-class and official Russia. Meanwhile, once convicted, Maslova evolves from prostitute to revolutionary. In the stories of Maslova and other convicts, Leo Tolstoy depicts the hard lot of women and the disenfranchised in nineteenth-century tsarist Russia.