Leo Tolstoy

Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Chechen struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling Imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who...
By: Leo Tolstoy

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...
By: Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy’s first published work, completed in 1856, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth recounts his early life up to his university days. These are not memoirs in the strict sense of the word, as the author’s Stendhalian take on the autobiographical genre...
By: Leo Tolstoy

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...
By: Leo Tolstoy

Considered to be Leo Tolstoy's most personal novel, Anna Karenina is a resonant story which scrutinizes fundamental moral and theological questions through the impassioned and tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a...
By: Leo Tolstoy