Search results for ""author leo tolstoy""

Leo Tolstoy is one of the most celebrated novelists of all time. As well as writing literary classics such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace he was also the author of some hugely influential critical and philosophical works. First published in 1898 his book length essay What is Art? has lost none of its power to challenge our perception of art and its function in society today. In this provocative work Tolstoy famously dismisses works by Shakespeare, Dante, Wagner and even many of his own works as 'bad art' based on various criteria including sincerity, ethics, morality and accessibility. Tolstoy took art seriously at a time when western civilization toyed with it as a mere pastime during the height of the Aestheticism movement. For him, art was natural and necessary to the advancement of humankind. In his introduction to this translation, W. Gareth Jones shows how vitally Tolstoy's personality and experiences in life were engaged in creating What is Art?. Jones shows how integral the essay was to his art and teaching, and why it continues to demand a response from us.

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'One of the greatest love stories in world literature' Vladimir NabokovAnna is a beautiful, intelligent woman whose passionate affair with the dashing Count Vronsky leads her to ruin. But her story is also about a search for meaning, and by twinning it with that of Levin, an awkward idealist whose happy marriage and domestic trials form the backdrop for a similar quest, Tolstoy creates a rich and complex masterpiece that has captured the imagination of readers for decades.'I've read and re-read this novel and every time I find another layer in the story' Philippa GregoryTRANSLATED BY LOUISE AND AYLMER MAUDEVINTAGE CLASSICS RUSSIAN SERIES - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.

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First published in 1878, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is the tragic story of aristocrat Anna Karenina and her ill-fated affair with the cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Although passionately in love, the couple finds their romance doomed by the sexual mores of their time and place, and the double standards that apply to men and women. The tale's panoramic sweep and Tolstoy's colorful depiction of Russia and the European continent are virtually unparalleled in world literature. This novel, in the estimation of William Faulkner, is 'the best ever written.' Anna Karenina is one of Barnes & Noble's leatherbound classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world's greatest authors in an exquisitely designed bonded leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and an attractive ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offers hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for any home library.

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It is the first in a series of three novels and is followed by Boyhood and Youth. Published when Tolstoy was just twenty-three years old, the book was an immediate success, earning notice from other Russian novelists including Ivan Turgenev, who heralded the young Tolstoy as a major up-and-coming figure in Russian literature.Childhood is an exploration of the inner life of a young boy, Nikolenka, and one of the books in Russian writing to explore an expressionistic style, mixing fact, fiction and emotions to render the moods and reactions of the narrator.The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things. He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancée Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved Tsar Nicholas I. The blow to his pride is massive, and he retreats to the arms of Russian Orthodoxy and becomes a monk. Many years of humility and doubt f

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Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Dmitry Andreich Olenin, in the hope of escaping the hollowness of his privilege, joins the army and heads to the Caucasus. There among the foothills he will meet the Cossacks: a people he considers to be at one with the land. In their company he will hunt, he will drink, he will fall in love and, slowly, he will begin to understand that between people, between cultures, there is often a space that cannot be traversed...'It is the richness of Tolstoy's genius that strikes us most in this story' Virginia Woolf

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The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and often neglecting his family in the process. When, after a small accident, he fails to make the expected recovery, it gradually becomes clear that he is soon to die. Ivan Ilyich then starts to question the futility and barrenness of his previous existence, realizing to his horror, as he grapples with the meaning of life and death, that he is totally alone.Included in this volume is another celebrated novella by Tolstoy, The Devil, which addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience, providing at the same time a further exploration of human fear and obsession.

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This is the official tie-in edition to the BBC adaptation of War and Peace with an exclusive introduction written by Andrew Davies.Tolstoy’s beguiling masterpiece entwines love, death and determinism with Russia’s war with Napoleon and its effects on those swept up by the terror it brings. The lives of Pierre, Prince Andrei and Natasha are changed forever as conflict rages throughout the early nineteenth century. Following the rise and fall of some of society’s most influential families, this truthful and poignant epic is as relevant today as ever.This six part adaptation has been written by Bafta-winning author Andrew Davies and will be directed by Tom Harper (Peaky Blinders, The Scouting Book for Boys, Woman in Black: Angel of Death). Accompanied by a stellar cast including Paul Dano (12 Years a Slave, Prisoners, There Will Be Blood) as the idealistic Pierre, James Norton (Happy Valley, Belle, Grantchester) as the ambitious Prince Andrei and Lily James (Cinderella, Downton Abbey) as the impulsive beauty Natasha. It also features the legendary Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge, Harry Potter, Longford), Gillian Anderson (The Fall, The X-Files), Greta Scacchi (White Mischief, Presumed Innocent) and many more.

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Pearson English Readers bring language learning to life through the joy of reading. Well-written stories entertain us, make us think, and keep our interest page after page. Pearson English Readers offer teenage and adult learners a huge range of titles, all featuring carefully graded language to make them accessible to learners of all abilities. Through the imagination of some of the world’s greatest authors, the English language comes to life in pages of our Readers. Students have the pleasure and satisfaction of reading these stories in English, and at the same time develop a broader vocabulary, greater comprehension and reading fluency, improved grammar, and greater confidence and ability to express themselves. Find out more at english.com/readers

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Helen Edmundson's celebrated and 'exemplary' (The Times) adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's enduring classic is a vibrant and deeply moving meditation on the nature of love. Anna is beautiful and admired but empty – until a chance meeting throws her into emotional turmoil and a scandalous affair. Contrasting with this tale of destructive love is the story of Levin, an idealistic man striving to find meaning in life – and a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself. Helen Edmundson's stage adaptation of Anna Karenina was first performed by Shared Experience at the Theatre Royal, Winchester, in January 1992 at the start of a nationwide tour. The production went on to win the Time Out Award for Outstanding Theatrical Event of 1992. This edition of the play was published alongside a revival at the Arcola Theatre, London, in 2011.

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The four Gospels that begin the Bible's New Testament tell the life of Jesus. But each Gospel relates a slightly different version of events. Some stories appear only in one Gospel, while certain other stories are different in each. What Leo Tolstoy sought to do in "The Gospel In Brief" was to apply his tremendous skills as a writer to tell the life of Jesus in one seamless narrative, thus integrating the four Gospels. The result is a work that reads like a novel, complete with twelve chapters. The project was very important to Tolstoy. With "The Gospel In Brief", he sought to democratize access to the Gospel, making the life of Jesus accessible to everyone. (He particularly had in mind the Russian peasantry.) Tolstoy based his translation on his study of the original Greek versions of the Bible. Unfortunately the Russian Orthodox Church viewed the book as sacrilegious. How dare he re-write the sacred texts? The Church worked to suppress "The Gospel In Brief", and in 1901, it permanently excommunicated Tolstoy, Russia's greatest novelist.

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Dated the 14th of December 1908, A Letter to a Hindu was a letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Tarak Nath Das, a Bengali revolutionary and scholar, in response to a request for support for India’s separation from British rule, which argued that the Indian people should seek to free themselves from British rule through non-violent protests and strikes, and other forms of peaceful resistance. The letter soon gained international attention after it was published in the Free Hindustan, and it came to the attention of the young Mahatma Gandhi. Drawing on a variety of sources, cultures and teachings, Tolstoy’s letter was instrumental in forming Gandhi’s views on non-violent resistance – as Gandhi himself acknowledges in his introduction: ‘To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to be connected with the publication of his letter’.

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This trilogy of short novels, taken as a whole, recounts the young narrator’s early life up to his university days, each episode told through the perceptions, points of view and emotions felt by the protagonist at the time. Based on Tolstoy’s own life and experiences, this fictionalized account of a young man growing into the world combines anecdote with frank personal assessment and philosophical extrapolation, as the author’s Stendhalian take on the confessional genre confronts and blurs the notions of reality and imagination. Tolstoy’s first published work, which launched him on a successful writing career, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth – besides offering an early display of his storytelling and stylistic abilities – provides the reader with invaluable insight into the personal and literary development of one of the greatest writers of all time."

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Love... it means too much to me, far more than you can understand. At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance. One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving. Rosamund Bartlett's translation conveys Tolstoy's precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.

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Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background of a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and colour. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the other great works of Tolstoy's maturity.

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This volume includes Family Happiness; The Kreutzer Sonata; The Devil and Father Sergius. The four stories are all about love, but they take very different attitudes towards it. Tolstoy knows that jis readers have fallen in love and also, often, fallen out of it; they have wanted to kill their loved ones; they have lusted vigorously; or desperately sought the approval and even worship of others - Tolstoy depends on our own memories to entagle us in his tragic stories.

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'The greatest love story I've ever read' Andrew Davies Anna Karenina is a novel of unparalleled richness and complexity, set against the backdrop of Russian high society. Tolstoy charts the course of the doomed love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer who pursues Anna after becoming infatuated with her at a ball. Although she initially resists his charms Anna eventually succumbs, falling passionately in love and setting in motion a chain of events that lead to her downfall. In this extraordinary novel Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, while evoking a love so strong that those who experience it are prepared to die for it.

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'The beautiful illusion, when reading Tolstoy, is that one is looking directly at the world, as opposed to a depiction' Andrew O'Hagan from his preface to Childhood, Boyhood and YouthPublished in 1852, when he was just twenty-four, Childhood was Tolstoy's first published work, and the first of a trilogy of stories that evoke the upbringing and traditional education of a Russian aristocrat in a world that vanished with the revolution. In this self-portrait, narrated by its protagonist Nikólya, the young Tolstoy captured the textures of adolescence with a psychological insight and subtlety of analysis that look forward to his mature achievements; while his matchless objectivity - summoning the smells, sights and sounds of early childhood - is already fully present in these pages. The riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.

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Based on historical events, Tolstoy's beloved final novella tells the story of the rebel leader Hadji Murat-whom Tolstoy described as 'the leading daredevil of the Caucasus'-and of the precarious alliance he forged with his enemies during his final days. Set during the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1850s and expressing empathy for the resistance of the native peoples of Dagestan and Chechnya, Hadji Murat raises significant questions of power, imperialism, and betrayal, and remains moving and relevant today. This richly annotated edition features a selection of illuminating background materials that help situate the novella in its historical and literary context.

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"Backgrounds and Sources" includes central passages from the letters of Tolstoy and his correspondents, S. A. Tolstoy’s diaries, and contemporary accounts translated by George Gibian exclusively for this Norton Critical Edition. Together these materials document Tolstoy’s writing process and chronicle Anna Karenina’s reception upon publication during the period 1875–77. "Criticism" unites Russian and Western interpretations to present the best canonical scholarship on Anna Karenina written between 1877 and 1994. A wide range of perspectives is provided by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, Nikolai N. Strakhov, Matthew Arnold, M. S. Gromeka, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, Henry Gifford and Raymond Williams, George Steiner, Lydia Ginzburg, Eduard Babaev, Gary Saul Morson, Caryl Emerson, Donna Tussing Orwin, and George Gibian. A Chronology of Tolstoy’s life and an updated Selected Bibliography are also included.

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Inspirational Wisdom for Every Day in a Classic Daybook—"An excellent gift . . . A fine inspirational" (Midwest Book Review) During the last years of his life, Leo Tolstoy kept one book invariably on his desk, read and reread it to his family, and recommended it to all his friends: a compendium of wise thoughts gathered over the course of a decade from his wide‑ranging readings in philosophy and religion, and from his own spiritual meditations. Thoughtful Wisdom for Every Day comprises Tolstoy’s own most essential ideas about spirituality and what it is to live a good life. Designed to be a cycle of daily readings, this book offers thoughts and aphorisms for every day, following a succession of themes repeated each month—such as God, the soul, desire, faith, our passions, humility, inequality, evil, truth, happiness, and the blessings of love. Comforting, challenging, and inspiring, this is a spiritual treasure trove and a book of great warmth.

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In order to repay a small debt, the young student Mitya is persuaded by a friend to falsify a bank bond and cash it in. Little does he suspect that this small misdemeanour will have a profound impact on the lives of many other people around him – indirectly even leading to the gravest of crimes. This in turn sets off a long journey towards redemption and rehabilitation. Published only in 1911, after Tolstoy’s death, The Forged Coupon examines the deep, unpredictable consequences of every human act, revealing the Russian master’s moral preoccupations in the last years of his life, as well as his rejection of Christianity’s simplistic division between good and evil.

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This edition brings together Tolstoy’s 1886 masterpiece and several shorter works that connect with it in thought-provoking ways. The stories are accompanied by a fascinating selection of contextual materials, including nineteenth-century reviews, excerpts from Tolstoy’s letters concerning death, excerpts from a pamphlet he wrote after witnessing the slaughtering of livestock, and a portfolio of relevant photographs. As well as crafting fresh translations both of the stories themselves and of the background materials, Kirsten Lodge has provided an illuminating introduction and helpful annotations.

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Trapped in a stifling marriage, Anna Karenina is swept off her feet by dashing Count Vronsky. Rejected by society, the two lovers flee to Italy, where Anna finds herself isolated from all except the man she loves, and who loves her. But can they live by love alone? In this novel of astonishing scope and grandeur, Leo Tolstoy, the great master of Russian literature, charts the course of the human heart.A masterpiece of realism and illuminated by irresistible characters, Anna Karenina is among the best-loved of all novels, penetrating to the heart of the ruling class in Tsarist Russia. This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Anna Karenina is translated by Aylmer & Louise Maude, and features an afterword by Ned Halley.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

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Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world’s greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions to various questions that preoccupied him in old age, such as faith and existence, as well as matters of everyday life. Banned in Russia under Communism, A Calendar of Wisdom was Tolstoy’s last major work, and one of his most popular both during and after his lifetime. This new translation by Roger Cockrell will offer today’s generation of readers the chance to discover, day by day, these edifying and carefully selected pearls of wisdom.

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Love... it means too much to me, far more than you can understand. At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance. One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving. Rosamund Bartlett's translation conveys Tolstoy's precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.

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The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories is a collection of stories that emerged from a profound spiritual crisis, during which Leo Tolstoy believed that he had encountered death itself. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Anthony Briggs, David McDuff and Ronald Wilks.These seven compelling stories explore, in very different ways, Tolstoy's preoccupation with mortality. 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time? In 'Polikushka', a light-fingered drunk's chance to prove himself has tragic repercussions, while 'Three Deaths' depicts the last moments of an aristocrat, a peasant and a tree, and 'The Forged Coupon' shows a seemingly minor offence that leads inexorably to ever more horrific crimes. And in three tales about soldiers, 'After the Ball', 'The Wood-felling' and 'The Raid', Tolstoy portrays the brutality that all too often accompanies military life.The translations by Anthony Briggs, David McDuff and Ronald Wilks capture Tolstoy's powerful, vivid prose. This edition also includes a new introduction by Anthony Briggs discussing Tolstoy's breakdown and the effect this had on his writing, as well as a chronology, further reading and notes.Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana, in central Russia. He led a life of wasteful idleness until 1851, when he travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army with his older brother, fighting in the Crimean war. After marrying Sofya Behrs in 1862, Tolstoy settled down, managing his estates and writing two of his best-known novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878). In 1884 Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis, becoming an extreme moralist, rejecting the state, the church and private property. His last novel, Resurrection (1900), was written to raise money for the Doukhobor sect of Christian spiritualists.If you enjoyed The Death of Ivan Ilyich, you might like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, also available in Penguin Classics.

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Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of literary immortality; he had a wife, a large estate and numerous children; he was 'a happy man' and in good health - yet life had lost its meaning. In this poignant confessional fragment, he records a period of his life when he began to turn away from fiction and aesthetics, and to search instead for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth'.

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Leo Tolstoy's last completed novel, Resurrection is an intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger and forgiveness, translated from the Russian with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs in Penguin Classics.Serving on the jury at a murder trial, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devastated when he sees the prisoner - Katyusha, a young maid he seduced and abandoned years before. As Dmitri faces the consequences of his actions, he decides to give up his life of wealth and luxury to devote himself to rescuing Katyusha, even if it means following her into exile in Siberia. But can a man truly find redemption by saving another person? Tolstoy's most controversial novel, Resurrection (1899) is a scathing indictment of injustice, corruption and hypocrisy at all levels of society. Creating a vast panorama of Russian life, from peasants to aristocrats, bureaucrats to convicts, it reveals Tolstoy's magnificent storytelling powers.Anthony Briggs' superb new translation preserves Tolstoy's gripping realism and satirical humour. In his introduction, Briggs discusses the true story behind Resurrection, Tolstoy's political and religious reasons for writing the novel, his gift for characterization and the compelling psychological portrait of Dmitri. This edition also includes a chronology, notes and a summary of chapters.Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) spent his youth in wasteful idleness until 1851, when he travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army with his older brother, fighting in the Crimean war. After marrying in 1862, Tolstoy settled down, managing his estates and writing two of his best-known novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life, and in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramatic flight from home, at the small railway station of Astapovo.If you enjoyed Resurrection, you might like Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov, also available in Penguin Classics.

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This is a three-volume boxed set of Tolstoy's historical chronicle of Russia's struggle with Napoleon. The novel is an affirmation of life itself, focusing on the lives of individuals and the physical reality of human experience and its bewildering complexity.

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One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges. In some ways comparable to the controversial Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil shows Tolstoy at his most salacious, and addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy’s earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner’s Morning.

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'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories'Sharon Cameron in her preface to Hadji Murad and Other StoriesThis, the third volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction concentrates on his later stories, including one of his greatest, 'Hadji Murad'. In the stark form of homily that shapes these later works, life considered as one's own has no rational meaning. From the chain of events that follows in the wake of two schoolboys' deception in 'The Forged Coupon' to the disillusionment of the narrator in 'After the Ball' we see, in Virginia Woolf's observation, that Tolstoy puts at the centre of his writingone 'who gathers into himself all experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases to ask, even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it'.The riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.

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