Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy

This late novel is harsher and more modern than its better-known predecessors. Prince Nekhlyudov is a moral hero - formerly dissolute, now abruptly brought face to face with the consequences of his past, and with the means, as a wealthy aristocrat, to feel the responsibility to make reparations. He encounters one of his former 'conquests', a maid reduced to prostitution and then convicted of a crime deserving of deportation to Siberia.  The story, in three distinct parts, takes us from wealthy metropolitan salons - the milieu that in Anna Karenina was mainly accepted as natural - to the crushing poverty of the peasant villages, and finally to the elaborate and arbitary cruelty of the Tsarist Gulag. Published less than 20 years before the Revolution, this is a world where telegrams and electric lights, trains and rubber coats, mix with penal processions of convicts, like modern accessories within a medieval scene. There are beautiful descriptions of weather and landscapes, and the accurate and keen observation of people that we expect from Tolstoy. The dialogue is natural and deeply-felt. There is some emotional interiority in Nekhlyudov but it is superbly balanced with action and with the long term suspense of the situation, as he awaits the decision as to whether his remorseful offer of 'rescue' will ever be accepted. It's a tremendous story of moral anxiety, degradation and regret, but it does finish on a note of spiritual hope. Even though this is late Tolstoy, it's actually easier to read than his earlier epics. And I particularly recommend it to anyone who likes Graham Greene.