Short Fiction (Unabridged)
เบเปเบฝเบงเบเบฑเบเบเบถเปเบกเบญเปเบฒเบเบญเบญเบเบชเบฝเบ
Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice.
While perhaps best known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the Russian author and religious thinker Leo Tolstoy was also a prolific author of short fiction. This Standard Ebooks production compiles all of Tolstoyโs short stories and novellas written from 1852 up to his death, arranged in order of their original publication.
The stories in this collection vary enormously in size and scope, from short, page-length fables composed for the education of schoolchildren, to full novellas like โFamily Happiness.โ Readers who are familiar with Tolstoyโs life and religious experiencesโas detailed, for example, in his spiritual memoir A Confessionโmay be able to trace the events of Tolstoyโs life through the changing subjects of these stories. Some early stories, like โThe Raidโ and the โSevastopolโ sketches, draw from Tolstoyโs experiences in the Caucasian War and the Crimean War when he served in the Imperial Russian Army, while other early stories like โRecollections of a Scorerโ and โTwo Hussarsโ reflect Tolstoyโs personal struggle with gambling addiction.
Later stories in the collection, written during and after Tolstoyโs 1870s conversion to Christian anarcho-pacifism (a spiritual and religious philosophy described in detail in his treatise The Kingdom of God is Within You), frequently reflect either Tolstoyโs own experiences in spiritual struggle (e.g. โThe Death of Ivan Ilyitchโ) or his interpretation of the New Testament (e.g. โThe Forged Couponโ), or both. Many later stories, like โThree Questionsโ and โHow Much Land Does a Man Need?โ are explicitly didactic in nature and are addressed to a popular audience to promote his religious ideals and views on social and economic justice.
