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"'...not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle'- Leo Tolstoy. Striking a balance between philosophical discussion and compelling story-telling, War and Peace transcends the restrictions that Tolstoy perceived in the conventional novel. Set in Russia during the Napoleonic era, this epic novel follows the fortunes of five aristocratic Russian families over the course of the French invasion. Tolstoy's timeless portrayal...
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
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"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...
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Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...
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"Serving on the jury at a murder trail, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devasted when he sees the prisoner - Katyusha, a young woman he seduced and abandoned years before. As Dmitri faces the consequences of his actions, he decides to give up his life of wealth and luxury to devote himself to rescuing Katyusha, even if it means following her into exile in Siberia. But can a man truly find redemption by saving another person? Tolstoy's most controversial...
6) A confession
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In Confession Tolstoy poses the question: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my death? In 1879 the fifty-one-year-old author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina came to believe that he had accomplished nothing in life. Either of these magnificent novels would have assured Tolstoy's permanent place in the annals of world literature, yet his achievement was not enough to give his life meaning. Confession is an account of this...
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Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?...
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A new translation of two Tolstoy masterpieces includes "The Death of Ivan Ilyich, " in which a peaceful public official in the Russian provinces has his life permanently changed by a serious illness that no doctor can accurately diagnose, as well as "Master and Man."
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Everyman's library volume 243
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Written over a period of more than half a century, these stories reflect every aspect of Tolstoy's art and personality. They cover his experiences as a solder in the Caucasus, his married life, his passionate interest in the peasantry, his cult of truth and simplicity, and, above all, his growing preoccupation with religion. Ranging in scope from mini-novels like The Kreutzer Sonata and Hadji Murad to tiny folktales a few pages long, they provide...
12) The kingdom of God is within you: Christianity not as a mystic religion but as a new theory of life
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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
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"... A tale of evil begetting evil, through a succession of increasingly foul deeds that grow circuitously out of the initial act of counterfeiting a ruble note. The escalation of evil can be stopped only by one who humbly absorbs it, without passing it on. With the portrayal of this comes the salvation of all concerned."--Publisher description.
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Tolstoy retells "the greatest story ever told" integrating the four Gospels into a single twelve-chapter narrative of the life of Jesus. Based on his study of early Christian texts, Tolstoy makes accessible the powerful, mystical truth of Jesus's spiritual teaching, stripped of artificial church doctrine. -- back cover.
16) What is art?
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During the decades of his world fame as sage and preacher as well as author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Although Tolstoy perceived the question of art to be a religious one, he considered and rejected the idea that art reveals and reinvents through beauty. The works of Dante,...
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A trio of semi-autobiographical novels, “Childhood”, “Boyhood”, and “Youth” portray a rich landowner's son and his growing realization of the gulf between himself and his family's peasants. Tolstoy's childlike perspective, leavened with adult understanding, weaves a universal tale of the emotions, confusions, and fears of a young boy as he begins to understand his place in society and his growing awareness of the world around him.
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"When Marshal of the Nobility Pozdnyshev suspects his wife of having an affair with her music partner, his jealousy consumes him and drives him to murder. Controversial upon publication in 1890, The Kreutzer Sonata illuminates Tolstoy's then-feverish Christian ideals, his conflicts with lust and the hypocrisies of nineteenth-century marriage, and his thinking on the role of art and music in society."
"In her Introduction, Doris Lessing shows how...
19) The Cossacks
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"The Cossacks" is believed to be somewhat autobiographical, partially based on Tolstoy's experiences in the Caucasus during the last stages of the Caucasian War. Disenchanted with his privileged life in Russian society, nobleman Dmitri Olenin joins the army as a cadet, in the hopes of escaping the superficiality of his daily life. On a quest to find "completeness," he naively hopes to find serenity among the "simple" people of the Caucasus. In an...
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HPL 2024 April Showers
HPL Best Books of 2021
OBD Best Books of 2021 (BookPage) - Adult
OBD National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) - Adult
HPL Best Books of 2021
OBD Best Books of 2021 (BookPage) - Adult
OBD National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) - Adult
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"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...