The Cossacks (Everyman's Library, #170)

The Cossacks (Everyman's Library, #170)

• Used Book in Good Condition

<p>A brilliant short novel inspired by Leo Tolstoy€s experience as a soldier in the Caucasus, <i>The Cossacks </i>has all the energy and poetry of youth while also foreshadowing the great themes of Tolstoy€s later years. His na¯ve hero, Olenin, is a young nobleman who is disenchanted with his privileged and superficial existence in Moscow and hopes to find a simpler life in a Cossack village. As Olenin foolishly involves himself in their violent clashes with neighboring Chechen tribesmen and falls in love with a local girl, Tolstoy gives us a wider view than Olenin himself ever possesses of the brutal realities of the Cossack way of life and the wild, untamed beauty of the rugged landscape. <br><br>This novel of love, adventure, and male rivalry on the Russian frontier€"completed in 1862, when the author was in his early thirties€"has always surprised readers who know Tolstoy best through the vast, panoramic fictions of his middle years. Unlike those works, <i>The Cossacks </i>is lean and supple, economical in design and execution. But Tolstoy could never touch a subject without imbuing it with his magnificent many-sidedness, and so this book bears witness to his brilliant historical imagination, his passionately alive spiritual awareness, and his instinctive feeling for every level of human and natural life.<br>  <br> Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude</p><p>(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)</p>