This powerful novel Tolstoy's third major masterpiece after War & Peace & Anna Karenina begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event Dmitri Nekhlyudov called to jury service is astonished to see in the dock charged with murder a young woman whom he once seduced propelling her into prostitution She is found guilty on a technicality & he determines to overturn the verdict This pitches him into a hellish labyrinth of Russian courts prisons & bureaucracy in which the author loses no opportunity for satire & bitter criticism of a state system (not confined to that country) of cruelty & injustice This is Dickens for grown-ups involving a hundred characters Crime & Punishment brought forward half a century With unforgettable set-pieces of sexual passion conflict & social injustice Resurrection proceeds from brothel to court-room stinking cells to offices of state luxury apartments to filthy life in Siberia The ultimate crisis of moral responsibility embroils not only the famous author & his hero but also you & me Can we help resolve the eternal issues of law & imprisonment?