Wonderfully wide-ranging and enjoyable, this outstanding collection features highly acclaimed short stories by Tolstoy who is regarded as one of the greatest writers in history.
Among Russian writers, Leo Tolstoy is probably the best known to the Western world, largely because of War and Peace, his epic in prose, and Anna Karenina, one of the most splendid novels in any language. But during his long lifetime, Tolstoy also wrote enough shorter works to fill many volumes.
The seven parts into which this book is divided include 'God Sees the Truth, but Waits' and 'A Prisoner in the Caucasus' which Tolstoy himself considered as his best. 'How Much Land Does a Man Need?' depicting the greed of a peasant for land; the most brilliantly told parable, 'Ivan the Fool'these are all contained in this volume. The book includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.
CONTENTS:
PART 1 : FOLK-TALES RETOLD
The Godson
The Empty Drum
How Much Land does a Man Need?
The Repentant Sinner
The Three Hermits
A Grain as Big as a Hen's Egg
The Imp and the Crust PART 2 : ADAPTATIONS FROM THE FRENCH
Too Dear!
The Coffee-House of Surat PART 3 : TALES FOR CHILDREN
A Prisoner in the Caucasus
The Bear-Hunt
God Sees the Truth, but Waits PART 4 : A FAIRY TALE
The Story of Iván the Fool PART 5 : STORIES GIVEN TO AID THE PERSECUTED JEWS
Work, Death and Sickness
Esarhaddon, King of Assyria
Three Questions PART 6 : STORIES WRITTEN TO PICTURES
Ilyás
Evil Allures, but Good Endures
Little Girls Wiser than Men PART 7 : POPULAR STORIES
A Spark Neglected Burns the House
Two Old Men
Where Love is, God is
What Men Live by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Leo Tolstoy 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 '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 non-violent 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.
Lev Nikolaevic Tolstoj nasce a Jasnaja Poljana, in Russia, il 9 settembre 1828 da una famiglia di tradizioni aristocratiche, appartenente alla vecchia nobiltà russa.
Questa condizione influenzerà tutta la sua esistenza: da un punto di vista positivo perché avrà opportunità che altri non avranno, ma anche da un punto di vista negativo perché lo distinguerà dagli altri letterati del suo tempo da cui si sentirà spesso escluso.
La madre morirà quando lui avrà solo due anni e dopo