A collection of some of Tolstoy's most powerful powerful stories
The violent spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life that inspired his last period of creativity produced the stories in this compelling and startling collection. They portray the multifaceted nature of desire, from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. "The K reutzer Sonata" caused a public sensation with its indictment of so-called Christian marriage, a theme echoed in "Family Happiness." In "The Devil," a young man finds it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage. And "Father Sergius" shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Count Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 on the family estate of Yasnaya Polyana. He took part in the Crimean war and after the defence of Sevastopol wrote The Sevastopol Sketches (1855-6), which established his literary reputation. Among his best known novels are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). In 1910 at the age of eighty-two he fled from home 'leaving this worldly life in order to live out my last days in peace and solitude'; dying some days later at the station master's *ouse at Astapovo.
Donna Tussing Orwin, who teaches Russian Literature at the University of Toronto, was Editor of Tolstoy Studies Journal from 1997-2004, and is now President of the North American Tolstoy Society. She is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy (2002) and is currently editing a collection of newly commissioned essays about Tolstoy to be published in Russia in 2010 by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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