Heroes from classic novels are so popular and have become part of our lives, even without knowing it! We love them, hate them, or identify with them. Selection of thoughts and quotes from some of the most remarkable authors and philosophers in the mankind history.

As Ivan Ilyich lies dying he begins to re-evaluate his life, searching for meaning that will make sense of his sufferings. In 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' and the other works in this volume, Tolstoy conjures characters who, tested to the limit, reveal glorious and unexpected reserves of courage or baseness of a near inhuman kind. Two vivid parables and 'The Forged Coupon', a tale of criminality, explore class relations after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and the connection between an ethical life and worldly issues. In 'Master and Workman' Tolstoy creates one of his most gripping dramas about human relationships put to the test in an extreme situation. 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is an existential masterpiece, a biting satire that recounts with extraordinary power the final illness and death of a bourgeois lawyer. In his Introduction Andrew Kahn explores Tolstoy's moral concerns and the stylistic features of these late stories, sensitively translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater.

This is the official tie-in edition to the BBC adaptation of War and Peace with an exclusive introduction written by Andrew Davies. Tolstoy's beguiling masterpiece entwines love, death and determinism with Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on those swept up by the terror it brings. The lives of Pierre, Prince Andrei and Natasha are changed forever as conflict rages throughout the early nineteenth century. Following the rise and fall of some of society's most influential families, this truthful and poignant epic is as relevant today as ever. This six part adaptation has been written by Bafta-winning author Andrew Davies and will be directed by Tom Harper (Peaky Blinders, The Scouting Book for Boys, Woman in Black: Angel of Death). Accompanied by a stellar cast including Paul Dano (12 Years a Slave, Prisoners, There Will Be Blood) as the idealistic Pierre, James Norton (Happy Valley, Belle, Grantchester) as the ambitious Prince Andrei and Lily James (Cinderella, Downton Abbey) as the impulsive beauty Natasha. It also features the legendary Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge, Harry Potter, Longford), Gillian Anderson (The Fall, The X-Files), Greta Scacchi (White Mischief, Presumed Innocent) and many more.

Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world's greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions to various questions that preoccupied him in old age, such as faith and existence, as well as matters of everyday life. Banned in Russia under Communism, A Calendar of Wisdom was Tolstoy's last major work, and one of his most popular both during and after his lifetime. This new translation by Roger Cockrell will offer today's generation of readers the chance to discover, day by day, these edifying and carefully selected pearls of wisdom.

Tolstoy knew as he was writing Hadji Murat, his last work of fiction, that it would not be published in his lifetime, and so gave an uncompromising portrayal of the Russians' faults and the nature of the rebels' struggle. In the process, he shows a mastery of style and an understanding of Chechnya that still carries great resonance today. Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Chechen struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling Imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who accept him but never put their trust in him — and so Murat must find another way to end the struggle.

This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution. She is found guilty on a technicality, and he determines to overturn the verdict. This pitches him into a hellish labyrinth of Russian courts, prisons and bureaucracy, in which the author loses no opportunity for satire and bitter criticism of a state system (not confined to that country) of cruelty and injustice. This is Dickens for grown-ups, involving a hundred characters, Crime and Punishment brought forward half a century. With unforgettable set-pieces of sexual passion, conflict and social injustice, Resurrection proceeds from brothel to court-room, stinking cells to offices of state, luxury apartments to filthy life in Siberia. The ultimate crisis of moral responsibility embroils not only the famous author and his hero, but also you and me. Can we help resolve the eternal issues of law and imprisonment?

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Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the greatest novels ever written, did not emerge from a vacuum. They were preceded by at least twenty prose works of different kinds, some of them masterpieces in their own right. These stories may be viewed as a fascinating encounter with literary predecessors such as Rousseau and Pushkin, and they are never far removed from autobiography, but in them Tolstoy can be seen forging a strong, new cultural personality. Their virtues lie in local colour, brilliant characterization and dialogue, along with strong narrative interest linked to important ideas and meanings, most of which will re-emerge in the later works. This undervalued area of a great man's writing deserves closer attention, and will reward the reader with unforgettable individuals, issues and situations. In The Cossacks, for example, Tolstoy succeeds in combining a realistic description of the Caucasus with his hero's personal vision of the locality. Nor is this success the only one in this remarkable period. Reading these early stories gives a penetrating insight into the workshop of a towering literary genius.

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

This new edition includes: The Raid, Woodfelling, Three Deaths, Polikushka, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, After the Ball, and The Forged Coupon. Mortality was one of Tolstoy's most persistent themes, and all of the stories in this volume are connected by this preoccupation, along with the author's simultaneous attempt to help us improve our lives.

Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov.

Tolstoy's iconoclastic essay exploring art and its relationship with society is as relevant in the 21st century as when it was written over 100 years ago. What is Art? What is value? What is good taste? What makes a cultured class? Tolstoy wrestled with these questions for fifteen years, and this book is the result of his fascination with the evolution of art, and its relationship with religion, commerce, and science. As the growing digitisation of our world continues to provide new ways to create and consume art, and raises questions about its quality and its control, What is Art? challenges us to revert to the visceral, the authentic, and to think carefully about how art can shape our collective future.

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Tolstoy's final novella, The Forged Coupon is an ingenious study of the destructive powers of evil set against a brilliant depiction of Russian life.Inescapably in thrall to the power his crimes bring him, Stepan goes further and further down the path of evil, relentlessly seeking new opportunities to murder and maim. When, however, one of his victims refuses to surrender to him, instead dying with pity on her lips, he finds himself haunted by her image. Suddenly, he is faced with the choice of continuing a life of crime, or facing up to his actions and their certain consequences. Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, is one of Russia's greatest novelists.

Tolstoy's novel of spiritual regeneration recounts the sins of a young Russian nobleman and his attempts in later life to redress those transgressions. A panoramic view of Russian social life at the end of the 19th century, Resurrection pointedly articulates the author's contempt for the social injustices of the world in which he lived.

Leo Tolstoy undertook the writing of the stories in Divine and Human and Other Stories around the time of the 1905 revolution in Russia. While doing so, he drew on the tragic past of Russia and its empire to comment on the issues and ideas of the day. Tolstoy had long before taken on the mantle of sage, and in addition to his treatises and essays on religious and social topics, he continued to write many works of fiction. The stories Divine and Human, Berries, and What For? are collected together here for the first time, and they show the depth of — and contradictions in — Tolstoy's thought as he tried to reconcile his harsh religious beliefs with humanistic appeals for justice. Taken as a whole the collection is a revealing look at the irreconcilable life and thought of a literary giant.

Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels, — of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life's many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief.

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