Leo Tolstoy
This masterful novel is a religious fable of sorts, written by the gifted Russian author Leo Tolstoy as a means of shedding light on the hypocrisy inherent in many aspects of organized religion in the nineteenth century. The book follows the plight of Russian aristocrat Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov as he seeks absolution—both in the church and in his own psyche—for a sin he committed years earlier.
Napoleon's turbulent history with Russia including his doomed 1812 invasion provides the setting for Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Often referred to as the greatest novel of all time, Tolstoy's classic follows the tumultuous personal lives of two aristocratic families touching on all of the great human epochs; youth, matrimony, age and death.
Drawn from War and Peace,...
7) The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life
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
...One of the world's greatest novelists, Leo Tolstoy was also the author of a number of superb short stories, one of his best-known being "The Kreutzer Sonata." This macabre story involves the murder of a wife by her husband. It is a penetrating study of jealousy as well as a piercing complaint about the way in which society educates men and women in matters of sex—a serious condemnation of the mores and attitudes of the wealthy, educated class.
...Ivan Ilyich, a high court judge, becomes seriously ill and faces a long and gruelling battle with death. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, is more than a story about death, however. It leads the reader through a pensive, metaphysical exploration of the reason for death and what it means to truly live.
