Collected Shorter Fiction of Leo Tolstoy, Volume II: Introduction by John Bayley

Ranging in scope from lengthy novellas to fables and folktales only a few pages long, Leo Tolstoy’s short fiction provides a marvelous opportunity to become closely acquainted with Russia’s great novelist.

Volume 2 of the Collected Shorter Fiction reveals how Tolstoy’s growing spiritual preoccupations flowered into a series of extraordinary late masterpieces that equal anything in the earlier novels for intensity and power. Readers of The Death of Iván Ilých, The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Se...