Leo Tolstoy

An epic novel featuring the Russian role in the Napoleonic wars and providing a complex panorama of the life of the time.

In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich, " a middle-aged judge falls gravely ill and is shunned by his materialistic family; and in "Confession, " Tolstoy charts his own religious evolution from his rejection of the Orthodox Church to his embrace of spirituality.

A collection of novellas by the distinguished Russian writer, with supplementary critical and biographical background.

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction...

Tolstoy heard the tales that grew up around the warrior-hero Hadji Murad and wrote this sweeping tale that takes up the viewpoints of all major characters in a gripping first-person narrative. This edition includes newly commissioned end notes. Maps.