Leo Tolstoy

"A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...

With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs Translated by Louise Maude This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution....

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment...

First published in 1894 in Germany after being banned in Leo Tolstoy's native Russia, "The Kingdom of God is Within You" is, in the words of the introduction, "one of the most remarkable studies of the social and psychological condition of the modern world". Thirty years in the making, Tolstoy expounds upon his earlier work "What I Believe" and argues that nonviolence is the very foundation of Christianity. Tolstoy believed that the teaching of Christ...

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 follow. He is ordered to become a hermit....

Childhood (1852) is a novel by Leo Tolstoy. Published at the beginning of his career as a leading Russian author of his generation, Childhood is the first in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels tracing Nikolenka's journey from innocence to experience. As a record of the past, a nostalgic reminder of a lost world, Childhood is one of Tolstoy's most personal works, and yet his prose shows signs of the universal religious and philosophical themes...

"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...

This work marks the author's movement from the pursuit of aesthetic ideals toward matters of religious and philosophical consequence. The poignant text describes Tolstoy's heartfelt reexamination of Christian orthodoxy and subsequent spiritual awakening. Generations of readers have been inspired by this timeless account of one man's struggle for faith and meaning in life.

The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories, by Elizabeth Gaskell, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of...

In this collection, "How Much Land Does a Man Need? And Other Stories," Russian born Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) demonstrates his varied subject matter and style in his shorter fiction. In the title piece, "How Much Land Does a Man Need?," Tolstoy explores this very question through the story of a peasant with an increasing appetite for land. In "What Men Live By," the humble shoemaker Simon sets out to collect money to pay for new coats for the family....