Leo Tolstoy
The story follows unconventional love and marriage of a young girl, Masha aged 17, and the much older Sergey Mikhaylych, an old family friend. The story is narrated by Masha. After a courtship that has the trappings of a mere family friendship, Masha's love grows and expands until she can no longer contain it. She reveals it to Sergey Mikhaylych and discovers that he also is deeply in love.
2) 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
...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. German philosopher Martin Heidegger refers to the novella as an illustration of Being towards death.
Here are some of Tolstoy's extraordinary short stories, from -The Death of Ivan Ilyich—in a masterly new translation-to -The Raid,- -The Wood-felling,- -Three Deaths,- -Polikushka,- -After the Ball,- and -The Forged Coupon,- all gripping and eloquent lessons on two of Tolstoy's most persistent themes: life and death. More experimental than his novels, Tolstoy's stories are essential reading for anyone interested in his development as one
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