Collected Shorter Fiction of Leo Tolstoy, Volume II: Introduction by John Bayley [Hardcover]

Ranging in scope from lengthy novellas to fables and folktales only a few pages long, Leo Tolstoy’s short fiction provides a marvelous opportunity to become closely acquainted with Russia’s great novelist.

Volume 2 of theCollected Shorter Fictionreveals howTolstoy’s growing spiritual preoccupations flowered into a series of extraordinary late masterpieces that equal anything in the earlier novels for intensity and power. Readers ofThe Death of Iván Ilých, The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius, Master and Man,andHadji Murádwill recognize the brilliant novelist now transfigured by his passionate quest for salvation and forgiveness.
           
Aylmer and Louise Maude’s classic translations are supplemented by new translations by Nigel J. Cooper of six stories, including two that have never before appeared in English.

John Bayley, author of the Introduction to the collection, is former Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University and the author of books on Tolstoy, Hardy, and Housman. He has also written several novels and a memoir,Elegy for Iris.

The translators:

Aylmer Maudespent much of his life in Russia and was a personal friend of Tolstoy's.

Nigel J. Cooperrecently retired from Middlesex University, where he was a principal lecturer in modern languages (Russian and French).DE