The Forgotten Tolstoy Novel: A Reappraisal of Resurrection (1899)

Leo Tolstoy wrote three supersized novels. Two of them rank among the best known classics of world literature, the third one is rarely read and mostly forgotten. Yet when Resurrection was published in 1899, it created a sensation and outsold War and Peace and Anna Karenina. It was as if “an angel were to take to novel-writing,” announced one critic in p…