In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army. The four years he spent as a soldier were among the most significant in his life and inspired the tales collected here. In ?The Cossacks,? Tolstoy tells the story of Olenin, a cultured Ru
Set in Reykjavík, this novel charts the changes that took place when the rural community clashed with the American popular culture brought by American troops. The story concerns two brothers, one of whom returns to "Devil's Island" with an American accen
Throughout his life Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his Jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses his work with a powerful energy from the earliest tales including 'Old Shloym
Poor Folk was Dostoyevsky's first great triumph in fiction and the work that looks forward to the double-acts and obsessions of his later genius. It takes place in a world of office , lodging-house and seamstress's rooms and consists of an impoverished lo
Of all Russian writers Leo Tolstoy is probably the best known to the Western world, largely because of War and Peace, his epic in prose, and Anna Karenina, one of the most splendid novels in any language. But during his long lifetime Tolstoy also wrote
Banned in Russia, Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You was deemed a threat to church and state. The culmination of a lifetime's thought, it espouses a commitment to Jesus's message of turning the other cheek. In a bold and original manner, Tolstoy s
Uncluttered by the complexities of plot and character that daunt so many readers of the longer Russian masterpieces, Tolstoy's tales illumine eternal truths with the forceful brevity. While inspired by the sense of spiritual certainty, their narrative qua
This is the first-ever English-language edition of the book Leo Tolstoy considered to be his most important contribution to humanity. Widely read in pre-Revolutionary Russia, banned and forgotten under Communism, and recently rediscovered to great excitem
