Overcome with feelings of guilt over a crime committed in his dissolute youth, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov purses an eccentric path to personal salvation that will take him into Siberian exile and cause him to question every assumption upon which he has based his privileged life. Tolstoy's last and most controversial major novel is a powerful and panoramic examination of social hypocrisy, set against the seething background of a vast, unequal country on the cusp of a new century. For too long overshadowed by its great predecessors, it is increasingly coming to be appreciated for the originality of its philosophical vision, psychological insight, narrative drive and dark humour.