Collected Short Stories

by Leo Tolstoy, Robert Court (Illustrator)

Three questions --
After the dance --
My dream.

Genres: Classics

Paperback

Published August 1, 2001

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

[Taylor E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good. The Three Questions was my favorite, I think.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good, thought provoking stories. While written to make readers think, these stories are not preachy.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are some chillingly amazing short stories. Each story could last me a life time. Left alone in a Tom Hanks type of situation? Bring Tolstoy short stories. They quench something deeper than thirst or hunger. You won't be able to get up. You'll die like people who play to much World of Warcraft.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lev Tolstoy can evoke a character more fully and richly in a few sentences than most authors can manage in a chapter. The stories in the collection are amazing, particularly "Hadji Murad", which puts the current ongoing Russia/Chechnya conflict in a whole different light.

[Sandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy Tolstoy so...this is a collection that I've re-read a few times and always enjoy!