Resurrection

By: Leo Tolstoy

Narrated by: Neville Jason

Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

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

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.

Quick and great!!

The details are not very deep yet the coherence is very smooth
Of course, Jason Neville has done a wonderful job!!
If you’ve enjoyed any Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, before, you’ll like this one.

Amazing wisdom and insight

This is the third Tolstoy novel I've listened to and am a dedicated fan. It is also my favorite thus far. His insight into the human condition as well as into questions of morality and spirituality are beyond compare with anything else I have ever read and I have been reading voracously since the age of 6.

Tolstoy's clear and simple way of expressing these insights are also like having a spiritual awakening yourself. It is no wonder he is considered a master and his work as classics. Like both "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace" I will listen to this novel again as I get as much enjoyment and understanding the second time around with all the great Russian authors.

I also have to say that this narrator/performer is the best I've heard on Audible. I don't know what I did before Audible but with my busy life and the comute to work and getting some sort of workout in everyday, I would be deprived of amazing literature without It! This is definately a must listen.

Awesome book

I just read the grapes of wrath and again this book is also a bit too communisty for me but Tolstoy obviously keeping it 90 as far as brilliant story telling.

Best Narration I’ve ever heard

Without getting into my opinion of the story and literature, this is the best narration I’ve ever heard. I’ve listened to over 100 novels and this narrator has had the best annunciation and cadence.
It’s almost as read “by the author”...I feel like I knew the characters personally. The rich writing style of Tolstoy of course made that happen, but a narrator can detract from the story when not read with emotion and diction.

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

A must-read with impeccable narration

First, a note about the Kindle edition for immersion--there is none that I could find, but I must admit that I checked only the cheaper ones. So, I chose the free green one and tried to follow along. (My miserable experience is described in my Kindle review.). Text is especially necessary for Russian novels with 4-word character names and words with 4 consecutive consonants. I take notes only of characters' names and relations to other characters the first time I encounter them. I need to see the print for this and must say that I couldn't follow many foreign novels without this practice. Surely a serious reading keeps track of the characters, so I hope we find more immersion editions, at least of Russian and French novels in future.

My experience with the lousy Kindle edition makes me wonder how much of any historic novel is authentic in this century's renditions of it, but I have no other reason to doubt this audio edition. I do wish narrators would include footnotes, though, and repeat French phrases in English as an aside. The characters here speak French often, entire paragraphs of it. I understand most of it, but not all unless I can see it in print. We can't even consult a French dictionary without the spelling. It's a difficult language for me to get by sound alone, even though I studied it for 3 years and can read it well. (Just imagine a non-English speaker hearing "ah dunno." What to look for in the dictionary?)

As always, Tolstoy's characters are complex, and I appreciate that they engage in philosophical debates and story-telling a little less than Dostoevsky's. However, denouement consists mostly of reading from the biblical Matthew and attempts to design from it laws we would not want to live by in this century--we'd have all criminals running free! (Was Tolstoy, like Shelley, the "ineffectual angle"?) A few chapters remind us of Tolstoy's actual experiments with peasant farming cooperatives, but these chapters are not very detailed.

I respect the author's unambiguous assertion that armed service + alcohol = crime. Likewise, his treatment of rape (isn't it?) without really mentioning it, and his always surprising responses of other females toward the victims. Think of what he would make of violence today when he would factor in heroin "among the peasantry," automatic weapons, and perversion of two of the world's most prominent religions. (I exempt Hinduism.) And, I turn to Updike for the update.