Prince Nekhlyudov serves as a juror in a court trial and recognizes in the accused of murder the girl he once seduced and then abandoned. When she is unjustly sentenced to four years of hard labor, the prince's moral resurrection begins. He makes futile attempts to have the verdict overturned and ultimately follows the convicted woman to Siberia to offer her marriage as a way to atone for his guilt. The novel Resurrection, which is part of Tolstoy's later works, was published in 1899 after a ten-year writing process, initially in a magazine. Tolstoy critiques the social conditions and denounces the unjust legal system in Russia at the time. He contrasts the religious myth of resurrection with his own understanding: according to him, resurrection consists of the purification of the individual in this life and their return.