Leo Tolstoy
1) Childhood
Sometimes even the smallest and most seemingly trivial actions can have the most disastrous consequences. That's the idea that Russian literary master Leo Tolstoy explores in depth in the title tale in this collection, The Forged Coupon. This anthology brings together some of Tolstoy's finest short stories and novellas, and it is sure to please long-time fans of his work or new readers looking for an accessible entry point from which to
...5) My Religion
Leo Tolstoy is widely recognized as one of the most important fiction writers of the modern era. What's less widely known, however, is that Tolstoy was a devout Christian who read deeply in the subjects of religious philosophy and theology and, over the course of his lifetime, came to devise his own unique take on Christianity. This volume offers an overview of the author's religious views and practices.
Although Tolstoy is best known as a master of literary fiction, he was also an important thinker with a voracious and wide-ranging intellect. In this extended look at the intersection between science and art, Tolstoy frames his own creative process in the context of thousands of years of Western philosophy.
An alternate translation of Tolstoy's classic novella, Family Happiness, this tale revisits a theme that resonates throughout Tolstoy's work and is perhaps best elucidated in Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." A young woman who is still reeling from the death of her mother agrees to be wed to a much older family friend, but soon finds out that married life is not all it's
...This masterful novel is a religious fable of sorts, written by the gifted Russian author Leo Tolstoy as a means of shedding light on the hypocrisy inherent in many aspects of organized religion in the nineteenth century. The book follows the plight of Russian aristocrat Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov as he seeks absolution—both in the church and in his own psyche—for a sin he committed years earlier.
10) Boyhood
11) Master and Man
13) The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life
Initially banned in his home country The Kingdom of God Is Within You is Leo Tolstoy's great non-fictional work. The zenith of Tolstoy's thirty years of Christian thinking, it sets out a plan for a new society guided by a literal Christian interpretation. Christ conceived of a society based on love, compassion and tolerance, and Tolstoy believed this was incompatible with violence. Tolstoy's response is the principle of nonresistance in
...14) What to Do?
Today, Leo Graf Tolstoy is regarded as one of world's foremost masters of prose. In his lifetime, he was responsible for creating such works of genius as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In addition to his keen insight into the small details of family life, Tolstoy had a penetrating perspective on the sweeping social trends facing Russia and the world at large. Both themes are explored at length in What to Do?
Today, Leo Tolstoy is best remembered for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina, both epic, sweeping works that unfold on a grand scale. But Tolstoy also dabbled in short-form fiction, and the results are similarly remarkable. This volume brings together a number of Tolstoy's shorter pieces, including A Russian Proprietor and The Three Deaths.
A young man, Olenin, is stationed in the Caucasus, where he falls in love with the place, the people, and the simple way of life. Though he has fallen in love with the betrothed of a man he has befriended, he believes that he can be self-sacrificing, until a fellow Russian brings the complexity of Moscow-thinking back to Olenin.
Hadji Murad takes place in the mid-nineteenth century Caucasus Mountains, where a religious civil war has been waged by the Tartar Moslem mountaineers, also known as the Chechen, against the Russian imperial army and Orthodox church, who are attempting to repress them and to extend the empire.