Leo Tolstoy Short Novels Volume Two

by Leo Tolstoy

Subtitled "Stories of God, Sex, and Death," this compiles a number of Tolstoy's short novels. This book contains: The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Devil, The Kreutzer Sonata, A Talk Among Leisured People and Walk in the Light While There is Light, Master and Man, Father Sergius, Hadji Murad, and The Forged Coupon. Selected and introduced by Ernest J. Simmons, various translators.

575 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1966

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reviews

[Erich C · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Death of Ivan Ilych - 5 stars
The Devil - 4 stars
The Kreutzer Sonata - 5 stars
Walk in the Light While there is Light - 3 stars
Master and Man - 5 stars
Father Sergius - 4.5 stars
Hadji Murad - 4 stars
The Forged Coupon - 4.5 stars