Volume 1 of the Everyman Collected Shorter Fiction is dominated by the characteristic experiences of his early life as soldier, land-owner, husband and father, the life which shaped Anna Karenina and War and Peace.
Written over a period of more than half a century, Tolstoy's enchanting short stories and novellas reflect every aspect of his developing art and outlook. Volume 1 of the Everyman Collected Shorter Fiction is dominated by the characteristic experiences of his early life as soldier, land-owner, husband and father, the life which shaped Anna Karenina and War and Peace. It also includes several short fables which point to his later preoccupation with the religious life. Volume 2 reveals how these spiritual intimations flowered into a series of extraordinary late masterpieces which equal anything in the earlier novels for intensity and power. Readers of The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius, Master and Man and Hadji Murad will recognize the brilliant younger novelist, now transfigured by his passionate quest for salvation and forgiveness.
