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Master and Man and Other Stories (14th Print)

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SKU:
1450
Condition:
Like New
Format:
Trade Paperback, 271 pages
Publisher:
The Penguin Group, 1977
Edition:
First Penguin Classics Edition, Fourteenth Printing

These three stories were begun in the 1890s during the period when Tolstoy, tormented by questions of religion and morality, undertook literature almost as a guilty pleasure.

He none the less put his highest art into them and only twinges of dogma. Both Father Sergius and Master and Man are preoccupied with material desires--for the flesh in one instance and in the other for money--although the first story, involving a dashing young officer turned monk, also bears out Tolstoy's assertion that "the struggle with lust is...only a stage; the main struggle is with worldly fame". Hadji Murat stands apart in that Tolstoy lost all compulsion to moralize and going back to the Caucasus where he spent his young manhood, gives us in a soldier-traitor one of his most memorable heroes.  "Written in a language as spare and precise as Pushkin," commented Henri Troyat," without digression, without trace of self-indulgence, compact, nervous, virile, this novel gives proof that Tolstoy's artistry had reached perfection."

Translated and With an Introduction by Paul Foote

About the Author

A Russian author of novels, short stories, plays, and philosophical essays, Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born into an aristocratic family and is best known for the epic books War and Peace and Anna Karenina, regarded as two of the greatest works of Russian literature. After serving in the Crimean War, Tolstoy retired to his estate and devoted himself to writing, farming, and raising his large family. His novels and outspoken social polemics brought him world-wide fame.