Added by: orchiddl | Karma: 2025.10 | Fiction literature | 7 September 2021
4
What Men Live By and Other Tales
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist and moral philosopher noted for his ideas of nonviolent resistance. His diary reveals an incessant pursuit of a morally justified life. He was known for his generosity to the peasants. His best known novels are War and Peace (1869), which Tolstoy regarded as an epic rather than a novel, and Anna Karenina (1877). His work was admired in his time by Dostoyevsky, Checkov, Turgenev, and Flaubert, and later by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
War and Peace is a novel by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1869, after portions of a previous version were serialized from 1865–1867 in The Russian Messenger. It chronicles the epic story of the French invasion of Russia, of the events leading up to it and the reactions of five major aristocratic families within Russian society during the Napoleonic Era.
Epic historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865-69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families--particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs--the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14).
This collection of 11 stories spans virtually the whole of Tolstoy's creative life. While each is unique in form, as a group they are representative of his style, and touch on the central themes that surface in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Stories as different as "The Snowstorm", "Lucerne", "The Diary of a Madman", and "The Devil" are grounded in autobiographical experience. They deal with journeys of self-discovery and the moral and religious thought that characterizes Tolstoy's works of criticism and philosophy. "Strider" and "Father Sergy", as well as reflecting Tolstoy's own experiences, also reveal profound psychological insights.
