The only comprehensive hardcover edition of Tolstoy's shorter fiction--54 stories & novellas (two newly translated by Nigel J. Cooper), written over a period of more than half a century. Every aspect of Tolstoy's art & personality is reflected: his experiences as a soldier in the Caucasus, his married life, his passionate interest in the peasantry, his belief in truth & simplicity, and, above all, his growing preoccupation with religion. Ranging in scope from the short novels Hadji Murad & The Kreutzer Sonata, to folktales only a few pages long, they bring us intimately into the world of the great Russian novelist.