Bøker av Leo Tolstoy

This "Critical Edition" is based on the Maude translation. The text includes three maps of Napoleon's campaigns and battles in Russia, the publication history of "War and Peace", selections from Tolstoy's letters and diaries, three drafts of his introduction to the novel, and 20 critical essays.

It is universally acknowledged that Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was as much a master of the short story as he was of the full-length novel. This original collection features some of his most hard-to-find tales including the posthumously published "Alyosha the Pot," the two-part novella "The Forged Coupon," and "After the Dance," aka "After the Ball."

Presented here in a brand-new translation, The Forged Coupon examines the deep, unpredictable consequences of every human act, revealing the Russian master's moral preoccupations in the last years of his life, as well as his rejection of Christianity's simplistic division between good and evil.

For the first time, Russia's most renowned first-person narratives are collected in one volume.Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground, Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman, Ivan Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Leo Tolstoy's Lucerne are all here. Produced between 1835 and 1864, these four works helped define Russia's Golden Age of Literature and established St. Petersburg as a literary mecca rivaled only by Paris in the 1920s. The stories in this volume all demonstrate, with deft mastery, a range of possibilities available in the first-person narrative form, setting a standard that future writers continue to admire and emulate today. These characters ache with an angst and ennui that was was all too common among the Russian intelligentsia during the rule of Nicholas I-feelings that ring true still today for anybody living under the heels of a repressive social structure. How they deal with those emotions, both as characters and as writers, provide lessons for us all.Complete and unabridged, with updated and revised translations, this is an essential volume for anyone interested in the best literature the world's greatest writers have to offer.

Leo Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich begins shortly after Ivan Ilyich's death. A small group of legal professionals, court members, and a private prosecutor have gathered in a private room within the Law Courts, and while looking through a newspaper one of them reads the following;"Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, with profound sorrow, informs relatives and friends of the demise of her beloved husband Ivan Ilyich Golovin, Member of the Court of Justice, which occurred on February the 4th of this year 1882. The funeral will take place on Friday at one o'clock in the afternoon." Immediately members of the group begin to think how Ilyich's passing will affect their positions and status; They thank God it didn't happen to them and ponder on the implications of how they might benefit from their colleagues demise, each one of them oblivious of the fact that death will come to them all. ¬The story takes us back and we see Ivan Ilyich in the prime of his life. He has studied law and is now a judge. He performs his work with a cold discipline and he is a social climber who has become devoid of emotion. He lacks empathy and any concern for his fellow man, seeking only to reach the top where he can look down upon his peers. One day Ivan has a fall whilst decorating his new house. He sustains an injury and although he doesn't know it, the injury will cause him to become ill and he will die as a result. During his illness he becomes bad tempered and bitter and refuses to believe he is coming to the end of his life. He gets little sympathy from his family and his only solace are his conversations with Gerasim, a peasant who stays by his bed and gives him honesty and kindness. Reflecting on his current situation and his past life Ivan's worldview begins to change. He realizes the higher he climbed in his noble profession the more unhappy he became, and looking back he realizes how meaningless his life had been. Slowly Ivan comes to term with his immanent death and finally he sees the light. He begins to feel sorry for those about him busying themselves living a life of habit unable to see how artificial their existence is and that they are not living a good life at all. Finally after his illumination he dies in a moment of exquisite happiness.The Death of Ivan Ilyich is Tolstoy's attack on the smug satisfaction of a middle and upper class population, who in his mind live artificial meaningless lives, lives of separateness unaware of their creator and what lies before them after death.Tolstoy's critic Vladimir Nabokov summed it up when he wrote; "The Tolstoyan formula is: Ivan lived a bad life and since the bad life is nothing but the death of the soul, then Ivan lived a living death; and since beyond death is God's living light, then Ivan died into a new life - Life with a capital L."

This epic is considered one of the most celebrated works of fiction and is regarded as Tolstoy's finest literary work. The book details events leading to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic times on Tsarist society. Newsweek in 2009 ranked it top of its list of Top 100 Books.

This book contains The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy's afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. This is a dual-language book with the Russian text on the left side, and the English text on the right side of each spread. The texts are precisely synchronized. A great book for learning both languages while reading a Russian classic masterpiece. Translated by Professor Leo Wiener, and Louise and Aylmer Maude; verified and corrected by Alexander Vassiliev.

When most think of Tolstoy, they think of the great author. 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina' brought him worldwide fame, and a good deal of money. Had he done nothing else in life, these two novels would have ensured him status and respect. Few others had written both a national epic and a great love story; and some might have been content with that. For his last thirty years, however, Tolstoy walked a different track. After his spiritual crisis, when he was 50, he exchanged his author's clothes for those of a prophet - a prophet who was to have a great influence on Gandhi amongst others. Through his prolific writing, he now became the scourge of the rich, the Church and the Government. Neither did he miss an opportunity to denounce both science and art. Darwin? Dostoyevsky? Shakespeare? No one was to be left standing. In 'Conversations with Leo Tolstoy', Simon Parke grants us the honour of sitting with the great man, towards the end of his life; and gives us the chance to chat with him. The conversation is imagined, but not Tolstoy's answers. This is Tolstoy is his own words, drawn from his extensive books, essays and letters; and the military, vegetarianism, marriage, non-violence, death, God and sex are all on the agenda. 'I want people to come away feeling they know Tolstoy,' says Simon Parke, who was keen to use only Tolstoy's authentic words. 'They will be become aware of his opinions certainly, for he was forthright in those. He had an opinion on everything! But I hope also that people leave with a sense of the man beneath the opinions. I don't always agree with him; but it is hard not to admire him. He was far from perfect, but as he says: just because he walks the road like a drunk, doesn't mean it's the wrong road.'

In his book, 'Twenty Three tales,' we see Tolstoy's love of the short story, whether for children or adults; and witness the secret of simplicity and transparency of style, so evident in the great Russian writers. The children's stories remind us of Tolstoy's life-long passion for the schooling and education of peasant children. Of the adult stories, some draw on traditional Russian folk tales, breathe the air old peasant wisdom, and take us deep into the land of snow, bears, heartache and vodka. Other stories reflect Tolstoy's political and moral concerns, such as war, alcohol and greed.'The artist of the future,' wrote Tolstoy, 'will understand that to compose a fairy tale; a little song which will touch; a lullaby or a riddle which will entertain; a jest which will amuse or draw a sketch such as will delight dozens of generations or millions of children and adults, is incomparably more important and more fruitful than to compose a novel, or a symphony, or paint a picture of the kind which diverts some members of the wealthy classes for a short time and is then for ever forgotten. The region of this art of the simplest feelings accessible to all is enormous, and it is as yet almost untouched.''Work while ye have the light,' is Tolstoy in teaching mode. The opening scene is an aristocratic dinner party, at which all the guests declare themselves dissatisfied with their dissolute and useless lives; but find a thousand different reasons why nothing should change. There follows a moral tale, set in the 1st Century AD, when the new Christian sect was just getting noticed by the prevailing Roman Empire. It tells the story of two school friends, Pamphylius and Julius, who take different paths in life; but whose paths keep crossing. Pamphylius joins the Christians, living poor in community, while Julius acquires status and power. Here Tolstoy gives us his picture of authentic Christianity; and gives Julius a choice.

'My Confession' is Tolstoy's chronicle of his journey to faith; his account of how he moved from despair to the possibility of living; from unhappy existence to 'the glow and strength of life'. It describes his spiritual and philosophical struggles up until he leaves the Orthodox Church, convinced that humans discover truth not by faith, but by reason.The story begins when at the age of 50, Tolstoy is in crisis. Having found no peace in art, science or philosophy, he is attacked by the black dog of despair, and considers suicide. His past life is reappraised and found wanting; as slowly light dawns within. 'As gradually, imperceptibly as life had decayed in me, until I reached the impossibility of living, so gradually I felt the glow and strength of life return to me... I returned to a belief in God.'Here is a quest for meaning at the close of the 19th century - a time of social, scientific and intellectual turbulence, in which old forms were under threat. Tolstoy looks around at both old and new alike, and like the author of Ecclesiastes, discovers that 'All is vanity'. His spiritual discoveries first take him into the arms of the Orthodox Church; and then force his angry departure from it.'My Religion' carries on from where 'My Confession' left off. Describing himself as a former nihilist, Tolstoy develops his attack on the church he has left. He accuses them of hiding the true meaning of Jesus, which is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount; and most clearly, in the call not to resist evil. For Tolstoy, it is this command which has been most damaged by ecclesiastical interpretation. 'Not everyone,' he writes, 'is able to understand the mysteries of dogmatics, homilectics, liturgics, hermeneutics, apologetics; but everyone is able and ought to understand what Christ said to the millions of simple and ignorant people who have lived and are living today.' Here is Tolstoy's religion; and non-violence is at its heart.