Showing results by author "Leo Tolstoy" in All Categories

This is a diverting delight, a window on romance in literature. There are high lovers and low lovers, tragic lovers, comic lovers, and lovers who shouldn’t be doing what they are doing at all and certainly not then and there. There is even Fanny Hill trying not to discover what physical love is about when set upon by an old roué who has paid for the privilege. Though of special interest for lovers and their special lover’s day of St. Valentine, it is an amusing and sometimes surprising collection.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

Anna Karenina is a complex novel in eight parts with more than a dozen major characters. The narrative deals with themes of betrayal, faith, family, marriage, and Russian society against a backdrop of rapid transformation due to the liberal reforms of Emperor Alexander II. The plot revolves around an extramarital affair between Anna and the cavalry officer Count Alexei Vronsky that scandalizes Saint Petersburg society and compels the young lovers to flee to Italy in search of an elusive happiness.

A classic short story by Leo Tolstoy, this is the tale of the journey of Vasili Andreevich and his servant Nikita, set in rural Russia in the 1870's. It provides insight into the human character and condition, greed, and social hierarchy. Gripping, touching, and reflective.

Resurrection is the last of Tolstoy's major novels. It tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem the suffering his youthful philandering inflicted on a peasant girl who ends up a prisoner in Siberia. Tolstoy's vision of redemption, achieved through loving forgiveness and his condemnation of violence, dominate the novel. An intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness, Resurrection is at the same time a panoramic description of social life in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century.

The book contains the famous story of love, "The Kreutzer Sonata", of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).

Anna Karenina: Adapted for Modern Readers invites you into Tolstoy’s timeless masterpiece with fresh clarity and ease. This carefully refreshed edition features clean, distraction-free formatting, contemporary typography, and lightly clarified language that makes the prose more fluid without losing its original music. The result is a highly readable text that preserves Tolstoy’s voice, characters, and sweeping narrative while removing the barriers that often keep modern readers from fully engaging with this classic. Set in 19th-century Russian high society, Anna Karenina explores love, ...

A selection of short stories for the holidays including classics from Hans Christian Andersen, Tolstoy and L. Frank Baum.

Leo Tolstoy is one of the most celebrated novelists of all time. As well as writing literary classics such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace, he was also the author of some hugely influential critical and philosophical works. First published in 1898, his book-length essay What is Art? has lost none of its power to challenge our perception of art and its function in society today.

War and Peace – Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. Anna Karenina – The heroine of Tolstoy's epic of love and self-destruction, Anna Karenina has beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son, but feels that her life is empty until she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Resurrection – It tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem the suffering his youthful philandering inflicted on a peasant girl who ends up a prisoner in Siberia.

"Bez ljubvi zhit' legche" - vospominanija, ispoved' L'va Nikolaevicha Tolstogo, russkogo pisatelja i myslitelja. Ego vospominanija o svoej chelovecheskoj prirode, kotoraja sklonna k ubijstvam, dujeljam, kartezhnym igram, k pol'zovaniju chuzhimi blagami, k kaznjam, bludu i obmanu. No v protivoves jetomu vsegda stavalo stremlenie k luchshemu. "Bez ljubvi zhit' legche. No bez nejo net smysla" glavnaja ideja Tolstogo.

In the setting of what is present-day Kazakhstan, Tolstoy examines two psychological problems. The first dilemma is that of a young man who desires both fulfilling love and a place as a respected member of society. The other is the difficulty of a primitive society to accept domination by a higher culture that has no understanding of the traditions it asks its colonists to cast aside.

Auf dem Sterbebett schaut der schwerkranke Richter Iwan Iljitsch zurück auf sein Leben - mit bitteren Erkenntnissen: Sein Beruf bedeutet ihm nichts, seine Frau und er haben sich auseinandergelebt, all die Vergnügungen mit seinen Freunden erscheinen ihm im Nachhinein als vertane Zeit. Kurz: Er wünschte, er hätte anders gelebt. Isoliert von seiner Familie leidet Iwan psychische und physische Qualen, denen seine Ärzte völlig hilflos gegenüberstehen.

In this essay on church and state, Tolstoy explains that the word ekklesia means "an assembly" and is so used in the Gospels. He argues that it was only since the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea that the Church becomes an institution. To him it was a fraudulent institution, designed to obtain power over people.

War and Peace is a literary work mixed with chapters on history and philosophy by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It was first published serially, then published in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.

В окружном суде с участием присяжных заседателей слушается дело о похищении денег и отравлении, повлёкшем смерть купца Смелькова. Среди троих обвиняемых в преступлении предстаёт мещанка Екатерина Маслова, занимающаяся проституцией.

"Krieg und Frieden" ist ein im realistischen Stil geschriebenes Historiengemälde des russischen Schriftstellers Leo Tolstoi. Es gilt als eines der bedeutendsten Werke der Weltliteratur und wurde mehrfach verfilmt. In seiner Mischung aus historischem Roman und militär-politischen Darstellungen sowie Analysen der zaristischen Feudalgesellschaft während der napoleonischen Ära Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts in Russland und der französischen Invasion zwischen 1805 und 1812 nimmt es die Montagetechnik moderner Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts vorweg.

The Inevitable Revolution is an essay about abolishing the law of violence and replacing it with the law of love. It is a text on civil disobedience, pacifism, and anarchism, and it is Tolstoy's last non-fiction work detailing his final opinions on political, economic, and religious issues. In it, he criticizes prisons, parliaments, wars, conscription, capitalism, theft, revolutionary violence, and taxes, and praises Christianity's message of love as the solution to these problems; although he also recognizes the law of love in other religions.

Outside of Russia, Leo Tolstoy is known mostly as the author of the Napoleonic War epic War and Peace. Therefore, this collection is bound to be a new experience for most, since it includes a set of Tolstoy's stories intended for children.

As this stranger comes to live and work with the cobbler and his family, he learns the foundations of humanity and love. As a witness to several different encounters with this family, he begins to understand that man’s very existence and continued survival depends on love. Tolstoy brings the beauty of Christ’s wisdom and love to this simple story of generosity and good will. This work inspires true reflection into love’s role in life and even more so into God’s role in the lives of all men.