This novel is both a trenchant denunciation of government, aristocracy, the judicial system, and the Church as well as a highly personal statement of Tolstoy's belief in human redemption and spiritual development. It tells the story of a Russian nobleman who comes face to face with the sins of his pgsk.com Prince Nekhlyudov serves on a jury at the trial of a prostitute arrested for murder, he is horrified to discover that the accused is a woman he had once seduced and abandoned. His guilt at the central role he played in her ruin soon leads him on a quest for forgiveness as he follows her into the prisons of Siberia.