The Greatest Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy

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

1. The Godson

2. The Empty Drum

3. How Much Land does a Man Need?

4. The Repentant Sinner

5. The Three Hermits

6. A Grain as Big as a Hen's Egg

7. The Imp and the Crust
PART 2 : ADAPTATIONS FROM THE FRENCH

8. Too Dear!

9. The Coffee-House of Surat
PART 3 : TALES FOR CHILDREN

10. A Prisoner in the Caucasus

11. The Bear-Hunt

12. God Sees the Truth, but Waits
PART 4 : A FAIRY TALE

13. The Story of Iván the Fool
PART 5 : STORIES GIVEN TO AID THE PERSECUTED JEWS

14. Work, Death and Sickness

15. Esarhaddon, King of Assyria

16. Three Questions
PART 6 : STORIES WRITTEN TO PICTURES

17. Ilyás

18. Evil Allures, but Good Endures

19. Little Girls Wiser than Men
PART 7 : POPULAR STORIES

20. A Spark Neglected Burns the House

21. Two Old Men

22. Where Love is, God is

23. 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.