In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, `a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, `of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation'. Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction...

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two womenthe notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaiaboth involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkins honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett...

"A Raw Youth (The Adolescent)" is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1875 novel which tells the story of the life of a 19-year-old intellectual, Arkady Dolgoruky, who is the illegitimate child of the controversial and womanizing landowner Versilov. The novel focuses primarily on the conflict that arises between Arkady and Versilov, when Arkady rejoins his family in St. Petersburg. Arkady who has been away at boarding school hardly knows his family and when he comes...

Initially banned in his home country The Kingdom of God Is Within You is Leo Tolstoy's great non-fictional work. The zenith of Tolstoy's thirty years of Christian thinking, it sets out a plan for a new society guided by a literal Christian interpretation. Christ conceived of a society based on love, compassion and tolerance, and Tolstoy believed this was incompatible with violence. Tolstoy's response is the principle of nonresistance in

...

Chekhov's miraculous stories not only changed the face of the short story form, but have provided for the innumerable readers who have cherished his work and access to the quiet dramas of the soul, and a degree of human fellow-feeling never before offered by literature.

A selection of Chekhov's longer stories - effectively novellas - in translation. These stories tell of characters attemptingh to create meaning through work, connection with others and art; they deal with misunderstandings and loss; they celebrate brief joys, sudden passions and unsatisfied longings, all underscored by Chekhov's gentle wit and great humanity.-- ;