The Russian novelist and moral philosopher Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) ranks as one of the world s great writers, and his War and Peace has been called the greatest novel ever written. The purpose of all true creative art, he believed, is to teach. But the message in all his stories is presented with such humour […]
Of all Russian writers Leo Tolstoy is probably the best known to the Western world, largely because of War and Peace, his epic in prose, andAnna Karenina, one of the most splendid novels in any language. But during his long lifetime Tolstoy also wrote enough shorter works to fill many volumes. Here reprinted in one […]
[close] By the time he dies, Ivan Ilych has come to understand the worthlessness of his life. Paradoxically, this elevates him above the common man, who avoids the reality of death and the effort it takes to make life worthwhile. In Tolstoys own words, “Ivan Ilyichs life had been . . . most ordinary and […]