The Cossacks and Other Stories

Oct 10, 2024 8:22 AM

Author:Leo Tolstoy,Paul Foote,David McDuff

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, it is amongst the last and greatest of Tolstoy's shorter works.

Reviews

The most perceptive author of the twentieth century

—— The Times

Yates is a realist par excellence, the natural heir to Hemingway's pared-to-the-bones style and the antecedent of Carver's flat minimalism. There is something else though: a kind of transparency, almost a translucency, that owes more to Fitzgerald, his great literary hero... Read and weep

—— Kate Atkinson , Guardian

Yates created what is almost the New York equivalent of Dubliners

—— New York Times

Eloquent and powerful... Wryly funny even when he's quietly tearing your heart out

—— Harper's

Extravagantly gifted... Yates' eye and ear are unsurpassed; I know of no writer whose senses are in more admirable condition. It is they that make his characters live, make these stories move and beat - they, and the sure perfection of his writing

—— Esquire

The stories are sharply focused, beautifully written and powerfully moving. I know of no collection like it. Deservedly it has become a classic

—— Ann Beattie

Yates is a master of the form

—— Sebastian Faulks

Dark, funny and disturbing

—— London Review of Books

These 10 inventive stories, set mostly in the Florida Everglades, mix satire and sophisticated whimsy

—— New York Times

Karen Russell has produced an engaging debut. Her ability to integrate mythology and the supernatural with the very contemporary...is reminiscent of Angela Carter, but unlike Carter's many imitators, Russell never descends into whimsy... In St Lucy's, humans, ghosts and animals are utterly real; and Russell sells the genuine article, a seemingly effortless writer

—— Alisa Cox , Mslexia

These are stories that will sneak into the back of your brain and lurk there long after you are finished reading.

—— Global Review

Poignant and wonderful story...concentrates, without effort, all Malouf's themes...it needs to be read

—— Prospect

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