riverrun editions
3 total works
'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories'
Sharon Cameron in her preface to Hadji Murad and Other Stories
This, the third volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction concentrates on his later stories, including one of his greatest, 'Hadji Murad'. In the stark form of homily that shapes these later works, life considered as one's own has no rational meaning. From the chain of events that follows in the wake of two schoolboys' deception in 'The Forged Coupon' to the disillusionment of the narrator in 'After the Ball' we see, in Virginia Woolf's observation, that Tolstoy puts at the centre of his writing
one 'who gathers into himself all experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases to ask, even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it'.
The riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.
'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories'
Sharon Cameron in her preface to The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
Tolstoy wrote in many genres for different audiences. In this, the first of three volumes of his shorter fiction chosen and introduced by the critic Sharon Cameron, we see works originally written for children, like 'God Sees the Truth But Waits', and 'A Prisoner in the Caucasus'. They stand alongside others which show his range and accomplishment, including an early story based on his experiences in the Crimean war, 'Sevastopol in May', and the visceral intensity of one of his greatest works, 'The Death of Ivan Ilych'.
This riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.
'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories'
Sharon Cameron in her preface to The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
This second volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction, selected by the critic Sharon Cameron, contains 'Family Happiness', 'The Devil' and 'The Kreutzer Sonata', three of Tolstoy's unhappy-marriage stories as well as 'Father Sergius', a story of a loss of identity in ambitious pursuit of holy virtue and 'Master and Man'. Tolstoy's antidotes to delusion, fear, jealousy and even madness have an ethical thread pulled through the fabric of different themes and genres.
This riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.